The Engage Experience – Take Two!

This is my second time attending the Engage Conference and for the 10^th year anniversary of the event, Theo has chosen Rotterdam, Netherlands. The following is my brief summary of the conference.

First, I have to mention the venue, “SS Rotterdam” marvelous cruise ship built in the 50-ties with gorgeous furnishings and nice rooms which take you back on a cruise from Amsterdam to New York the ship has done, before being retired and turned into a hotel and an interesting museum. On the top of that, Rotterdam is an amazing city.

Now that we have that out of the way, the Sessions were organized in six tracks, so there was always an interesting Session for me to visit. Some of the Sessions I visited:

An Introduction to configuring Domino for Docker – By Grabriella Davis

Gabriella explained, in a very short time, everything you need to know about Docker before deploying Domino in an IBM Container. If you plan on using Domino in a Docker container, make sure to take a look on the slides of this session.

HCL Collaborative Workplace Platform – Domino V10 the foundation – By Richard Jefts

A very interesting session about SaaS for Domino Applications, which is available now. They utilize Docker Technology and offer a simple, per application subscription, License model. It is even possible to chose in which datacenter you would like to have your databases. What surprised me most was that you even get a Bucket of Hours for modernization and maintenance of your applications.

30 tips about IBM Verse – By Hogne Bø Pettersen

Nice Session for everybody who plans to use Verse Client on a regular basis. Packed with lots of information delivered in a funny and energetic manner.

IBM Verse on Premises 10 Deep Dive – By Barry Rosen and Drew Birnbaum

Barry and Drew presented a very detailed plan for future releases of IBM Verse-on-Premises. Pre VoP 10 will be delivered in August this year, in Q4 this year, we will get V10 (with AIX Support!). There was also a promising Demo of the new Features. Take a look at the Photos, for the list of the planed features.

Best practices for deploying Verse on Premises (VoP) – By Sharon James and Tim Clark

Best way to get awake and energized for the rest of the day. We hoped for a lot and Sharon and Tim delivered even more. This was a very detailed, interactive Session about deploying VoP.

Pointing Fingers? DDM to the Rescue – By Keith Brooks

Great Session about DDM, Best Practices and some Features that are not documented. A “Must Have” for everyone using DDM.

Domino & Sametime Round Table – By Richard Jefts, Andrew Manby and Uffe Sorensen

Here we learned the future plans for the next Domino and Sametime release. There was a lot of insider Information, exact features that will be coming. We learned that we will get a new more powerful Sametime Chat Component with V10. Other cool Sametime stuff we will get:

• V10: A new Mobile Phone Application and chat on mobile devices in Limited Use license. Persistent Chat: ability to be loggen in on multiple devices without leaving the chat.
• V11: Audio and Video Components “Redesigned”, CONTAINERIZATION of Components and SIMPLIFIED Deployment.

  Yes, that is right, V11 of Domino and Sametime is planned. We also got information about new stuff coming in the next release of Domino, which will solve a lot of technical Problems and Challenges and generally deliver a better quality. Some of the mentioned new features:

• New Administration Tools
• New Cluster Features –> Replication of the DAOS Repository (.nlo files), “auto-replication” of all databases created in designated folders (no need to replicate a database manually across cluster members after creating it)
• A lot faster Replication
• Self-Healing mechanisms deployed automatically as soon as a Server “senses” a corruption of a Database.
• DAOS functionality improvement.

There was also a demo of “HCL Nomad”, a native iPad Client which allows you to use any Domino Application. This looks great, you can do almost everything as on a Notes Client, the view is scaled beautifully and it is fast. It also allows you to replicate and use any database offline.

I particularly liked the “Round Table” Sessions, as I find them very informative and interesting. Beside the ICS Topics, I learned a few new things about the IBM Champions program. In between the sessions you could visit the cool Sponsor Booths, I also enjoyed discussing possible solutions to some challenges with other attendees.

All in all, this was a great event, even better than the last year. I am happy to see that so much effort and investment is put into the next releases of Domino and Sametime. Many thanks to Theo for organizing this great event, and many thanks to Libby for attending and delivering IBM Champion Sessions.

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