2 weeks ago I have attended IBM Think in Las Vegas. The super conference of IBM by merging all the other conferences, like InterConnect, Edge, Amplify, World Of Watson and Connect/Lotusphere
Overall impression
Last year I was at IBM InterConnect, so I was prepared for the amount of attendees. And yes on Monday when Partnerworld and the Showcase where not running, it was a bit crowded in the hallways. Food was not bad, but the coffee, as an European, was a lacking caffeine 😉
The showcase was huge. The set up with lots of Think Tanks and Theaters was a good approach. A more informal way to deliver content.
As a developer the Dev Zone was a sort of coming home. Had a few good discussions with IBM developers.
Meeting lots of other IBM Champions and the ‘feeling special’ feeling provided by Libby and her wranglers made it worth to attend IBM Think
Domino and the future
The development of Domino and Notes where moved to HCL, and lots of IBM-ers have followed the code. In the past month the Jams and webinars shows a increasing interest to make Domino Great again.
At Think they announced the support of iOS, in other words all the Notes applications will run natively on a iPad.
In my opinion this is good news for the Notes apps, but modernisation of the apps is still needed. Lots of Notes apps do not have the sexy look and feel, so they will not look any better on an iPad.
My worry is the Notes developers. They might be thinking they stay on Lotusscript and @Fomulas forever. I think it is not career proof strategy.
The announcement of NodeJS support of Domino is very good one. Now we can make cutting edge front end / mobile apps with the latest and greatest frontend frameworks, like Angular/React/Vue……
Collaboration sessions
Collaboration solutions has an own morning with very good sessions. Especially the session of Rene Schimmer about IBM Connections was good. Lots of great new features on the horizon and Rene presented it very relaxed in a steady pace.
Almost all the ‘other’ ICS sessions where in room Surf B. Very well planned, so ICS has almost their own room to gather. Smart move.
Handson labs
I did a few hands-on labs, for me the best way to learn. I did one about IoT and Node-Red, one about Blockchain and one about deploy Microservices via Kubernetes.
I must say these where the best things at IBM Think.
Community and Champion day
At Sunday IBM Think started with Community and Champion day. A day full of content about User groups and more. Lots of sessions were presented by my fellow IBM Champions.
Next year IBM Think will be moved to San Francisco to fill the Moscone Center. Mark the date, February 12th till 15th 2019. Hope to see you there