The Engage Experience!

This year I was lucky enough to visit Antwerp and attend the “Engage” Conference.

First of all, Antwerp is a really beautiful city, it pays off to spare a few days and thoroughly enjoy the city. The architecture is stunning and the view at the Scheldt river is overwhelming. This also applies to the venue, Elisabeth Center Antwerp, it is very spacious, modern and I find it perfect for this kind of conference. It is located directly at the Antwerpen Central station (which is btw awesome), surrounded by many hotels, restaurants and cafés. I liked the layout of the Conference pretty much, the lunch area was at the same time the sponsor area, which I think allowed better interaction with the Sponsors.

At the Engage I concentrated on the IBM Cloud and Administration Sessions in general.

The sessions I liked most:

Embracing IoT in the Enterprise and Blocking the Top 10 Risks by Gabriella Davis

Really interesting session, Gabriella explained what are the top risks and opportunities that come with IoT. After this session, it became clear to me which skills I should acquire and in which way to evolve in long term.

IBM Connections Adminblast by Christoph Stöttner

Stoeps always has new mind-blowing suggestions to make your day as a Connections Administrator a lot easier.

Successful Domino Consolidation and Cost Reduction by Daniel Nashed

Daniel explained a lot of configuration settings which should be implemented on every Domino server, as well as many general Tipps for running Domino. Not to miss.

A Hitchhikers guide to troubleshooting Connections by Sharon Bellamy James and Roberto Boccadoro

Sharon and Roberto did a great job explaining everything you need to know to successfully troubleshot IBM Connections.

The sessions I visited regarding IBM Cloud and Hybrid Environment showed me that there are many tools (some of which are free) to migrate to the IBM Cloud, which is feature rich, dynamic and all in all offers some neat solutions. Here is where the IBM Dual-Entitlement license comes in handy, with it you can use IBM Collaboration solutions in a hybrid environment or in the cloud without the need to adjust your IBM licenses.

To summarize it all, it was a great conference with a personal flair, many thanks to Theo Heselmans for making it happen.