Artech founding partners Breogán Gonda and Nicolás Jodal, members of the Community in Brazil and major IT companies, systems managers, developers, webmasters, business analysts and project managers came together in Sao Paulo this month to join more than five hundred participants in a one-day event full of activities –from GeneXus Evolution 1 labs to interesting conferences and presentations of successful projects and solutions such as GXserver.
Summary of the meeting’s presentations The meeting opened with a warm welcoming address by Breogán Gonda, President of Artech, the first speaker in what was an intense and action-packed day. Mr. Gonda was followed by Pablo Mazzilli, of Artech Uruguay, who gave a presentation on how GeneXus X, GeneXus Evolution 1 and GXserver can be used to build flexible and dynamic applications in a world of continuous change, as is the world of IT. These new technologies, Mazzilli pointed out, can be used on any platform, as they include Win and iSeries, and they also provide increased productivity and enhance the development of 2.0 applications. For his part, Marcos Abellón, director of W5 Solutions, shared his experience with GeneXus X in the development of Software as a Service (SaaS) Solutions for customers such as Microsoft, Nestlé, Purina, DPA, Elogos, and Banco do Brasil, among others, and answered questions regarding such issues as joining the WEB trend through SaaS applications. Dia System was represented by its director, Dario de Sena Gouvêa, who delivered an interesting talk about the relationship between GeneXus, the automobile industry and the current global crisis. This software house specializes in information technology applications for car dealerships and has implemented its systems for the leading brands in Brazil, including Fiat, Peugeot, Toyota, Honda, GM.
Another speaker at the meeting was Antonio Carlos Navarro, of IBM, who focused on the issue of smart planet solutions and presented what GeneXus and IBM have to offer for Informix. Then, Antonio Carlos Ferreira, systems supervisor at Banco Itaú, shared his company’s experience with GeneXus and its evolving technology, and how after 20 years of working with this tool the company has successfully implemented mission-critical corporate systems. Marcus Costa, development manager at Porto Seguro, delivered another outstanding presentation, explaining why he chose GeneXus for his first projects, citing security as the main reason. For his part, Alexandre Mota, Founder of IntraFlow Tecnología, focused on the solution for sales in a time of crisis and presented Altus Sistemas de Informática’s sales system, with IntraFlow CRM, a powerful tool for monitoring the strategic and operational management of companies through the control of sales opportunities and simplification of administrative tasks.
At noon, in his sports keynote address entitled “Resources are not human”, Nicolás Jodal reflected on the different work environments and the concept of “Human Resources” itself.
In the early afternoon, Fernando Mazon, commercial director of ISO Enterprise, presented a Success Story which covered the case of Mormaii’s CRM and described how a human development-oriented culture, together with the possibilities offered by technology, can produce an effective outcome in terms of marketing and relationships with customers. Another success story was presented by Sergio Santos, CIO of Grupo Tecnol, -a company that has been using GeneXus for four years now- who showed participants how GeneXus X and GXportal helped his business improve relationships with the market, covering both theoretical and practical aspects.
Later in the afternoon, other commercial solutions were present at the meeting, such as ITS Logística’s traceability solution, which is currently used by Orica and Britanite, the largest explosives manufacturers in the world and in Brazil, respectively. Miguel Delonei Berres, of Delsoft, gave a presentation on the Coopatrigo case, which looked into the complexity of agribusiness cooperative environments, through DelsoftERP.
There were also technical presentations that dealt with a range of issues, such as the one delivered by Adilson Moacir Weddigen, Director of Migrate Company, which addressed migration to GeneXus X, or the one given by Ricardo Cesar de Oliveira, GeneXus consultant at Nelore, about migration processes from 9.0 KBs to GeneXus X or GeneXus Evolution 1, focusing on the most obvious differences between previous and current systems, which result in richer interfaces, and development paths with User Controls, Patterns and Extensions. For his part, Ronaldo Marques of Fornax Tecnología provided more details of the technology used at Porto Seguro in SOA environments, Business Components and GeneXus X. Vladimir Cruz gave an interesting talk on the implementation of the GXwiki in Faber-Castell's systems area, describing different ways of collaboratively building knowledge.
Near the end of the meeting, Nicolás Jodal gave his already classic presentation titled “GeneXus in the Short and Medium Term”.
This intense gathering of the Community in Brazil closed with Breogán Gonda’s keynote address on the relationship between people and technology.
At the end of the event, Gerardo Wisosky, Artech Brazil’s Country Manager said: “
We rose to the great challenge of presenting new features at the Meeting, with important booths (IBM, ITS, Delsoft, Migrate) and speakers. We left with the feeling that this was a very enriching event, especially in terms of networking. And he added: “We are already thinking about the next event in Brazil. It should be noted that we are inviting the Brazilian GeneXus Community to the XIX GeneXus International Meeting to be held from September 14 through 16.”