Engage at The Hague

Last week, the first post-Theo year of Engage took place in the Hague. Kris and Tom have taken the reins and probably only now fully appreciate the job Theo has done down through the years. Well done Kris and Tom on keeping this superb event going and getting it all over line! (well done to Theo on finally being able to take more of a backseat).

It was my first time in the Hague, it’s perfectly reasonable to get to from Schipol and the main train station was straight across from the conference venue (and hotel many of us were staying in). In a relatively high rise part of the city, I didn’t have too much time to wander, but everywhere I went was picturesque.

It’s hard to summarise the event of Engage, there’s so much in it. Any technical session I went to was informative and engaging (pun intended). For those that didn’t go I’d advise to look up slides from any of the Panagenda and Daniel Nashed sessions in particular. Engage is so much more than that though. It’s about conversations that arise in-between sessions, the evening events, the speedsponsoring, the unique set of people who turn up.

I would say there were a few technical themes in bold this year that HCL brought to us.

The two big ones were

Domino IQ (I have to say the sessions I went to here really broke what’s involved in setting this up -it’s exciting to see use cases build here. Really the only barrier to initial adoption is going to GPUs).

and

Soverign Cloud (HCL to offer a new platform LOTUS workspace).

Beyond that the other big ticket items were

Domino 14.5 on June 17th (already announced but we got some more here).

Notes/Domino Next. We got a cool (if short) demo of the next shiny new Notes client (keep voting for my idea here). As ever we wait with baited breath for delivery. On Domino – TLS 1.3 and HTTP/2, with DMARC and a better implementation of DKIM (Next will be out next year).

Other things of note in no particular order of importance or logic:

• I got lovely feedback from a good few people on my own session. You can get the slides here. (thanks to Keith for mentioning in his blog).
• Richard’s Keynote/OGS mentioned Domino YoY growth. Love it.
• Domino IQ has started a genuine buzz, everywhere.
• New attendees. As much as familiar faces are great. There were many, many new ones.
• HCL Software Expert Partner Program is coming. Lookout for this.
• The venue for the Engage dinner was particularly amazing – a spectacular church. 
• Next year Engage will be…..somewhere in Belgium
• OpenNTF have a new community server. Details here.
• So many people, from Kris and Tom, HCL, sponsors, partners, volunteers, staff onsite, presenters (I asked Tim how many sessions he had, 7 if you’re wondering) and attendees put so much into Engage. The community and the Engage event is so unique and strong as a result.
• I met and spoke to a tonne of people. For others I barely got to say hello. The few days are so busy.
• Post Engage always has me excited about the platform, this year more than ever.

Cormac McCarthy – Domino People Ltd