Elevate 2020 Review

Elevate 2020 Review

Well, this year's conference was definitely different.  As a result of COVID Elevate 2020 was entirely online.  In other words, no breakfasts, lunches, evening events, happy hour, etc. so they won't be part of the review this year.

Summary

I thought it went quite well, particularly given it was Appeon's first attempt at doing an entirely online conference.

Registration

Registration was done entirely through the Appeon website.  The course catalog allowed you to see the session schedule and select those you wanted to attend.  You could then download a calendar invite that you could use in your own calendar to remind you which sessions you wanted to attend and when they started.  I had some issues with that when the catalog was first released, notified Appeon, and they had the website corrected by the next morning.  About the only thing I would ask they add is the ability to select several sessions and then be able to download a single calendar invite file that contained all the sessions.  Instead. I had to download separate invites and import them one by one into my Google Calendar.

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Editorial – Elevate 2019 Report

Editorial – Elevate 2019 Report
  Summary

The event was held at the same location as last year, except that last year it was a Sheraton and this year it's called Philadelphia Marriott Old City,  (Marriott bought out Sheraton in 2016 and has been upgrading the old Sheraton hotels since.)  The event ran from Oct 28th to 30th.  This is the third year Appeon did it themselves, and they really seem to have worked out all the kinks.  It was an excellent conference. 

 

Registration

As with last year, you could check in for the event on the evening the day before the event started, which I did.  The only real downside this year is that the badges didn’t have the person's name printed on them.  It does have a QR code on the front which can be used to access the session catalog, and the back has a map showing how to get to Monday night's special event.  I suppose that made check-in much easier as they didn't have to search for a particular person's badge.  However, I would have liked to have an option to include a name. Perhaps a white strip at the bottom where we could write it in with a Sharpie or a clear plastic envelope or some other means of attaching a business card.  A number of us did find a solution for that on our own.

 

Breakfast

Same as last year, biscuits with egg and sausage, fruit and coffee.  Better that most conference breakfasts.  At least it worked for me.  I took a couple of them and then just ate the egg and sausage.

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Editorial – Elevate 2018 Report

Editorial – Elevate 2018 Report

Summary

This was the second time that Appeon had hosted a PowerBuilder user conference on their own, and once again I thought it went extremely well, even better than the prior year.  As with the prior year, attendance was good and quite diverse.

Facility

The conference was held in the Sheraton Philadelphia Society Hill Hotel.  As it is a hotel and in a popular area with a number of other hotels nearby, there was no need for Appeon to provide transportation to and from the conference location as was required last year. 

The meeting area was divided into four sections as highlighted in orange below:  A&B (A1, A2 and B all combined), C, D and E (E1 and E2 combined).  The keynotes were given in A&B and sessions were running concurrently in A&B, C, D and E.  Breakfasts were provided in the Ballroom Foyer and lunches in the Hamilton Room.

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Elevate 2018 – Annual PowerBuilder Conference Last Call

Elevate 2018 – Annual PowerBuilder Conference Last Call

This years Elevate 2018 Conference is now fast approaching so it is time to register to benefit from the significant amount of technical sessions scheduled.  The technical sessions should be of interest no matter you are primarily maintaining an app or looking to elevate your apps to the next level. The conference itself this year is scheduled for November 5-7, 2018 in Philadelphia at the Sheraton Philadelphia Society Hill Hotel, and your registration fee covers the 60+ hours of technical sessions, breakfasts and lunches, and admission to a special evening networking event.

The conference will start out with an information-packed keynote address that will cover many exciting items about PB 2017 R3, the upcoming PB 2018, and the latest updates to the product roadmap. The keynote will also address the new C# features of PB 2018 with valuable information, such as: 

How PowerBuilder 2018 fits in the .NET ecosystem?How PowerBuilder 2018 takes your apps to the cloud?How will PowerBuilder modernize the UI of your apps?What are the latest updates to the PowerBuilder roadmap?

Many technical sessions are planned related to the key features and technologies of PB 2018 such as:  .NET Core framework direction, n-tier REST based architecture, the new C# DataStore/ModelMapper, and so on. Following the keynote address, various daily technical sessions will commence focusing on hot topic areas such as: C# with PowerBuilder, Modernizing your UI/UX, Cloudify Existing App, Integration, Design & Best Practices, and Development Productivity. In between these sessions, you will be able to schedule time to meet one-on-one with the Appeon Product Team or Appeon staff to discuss your specific project questions or challenges.

Building on the excellent feedback from last years Elevate 2017 conference, you will be excited to hear that many of last years presenters will also be returning to Elevate 2018 to present fresh new topics for this year. On the Appeon side, the Elevate 2018 conference will also have the pleasure of key people from the Appeon Product Team, including Appeon CTO John Qi and Appeon product manager Julie Jiang, and of course other Appeon staff. Many of the returning conference presenters are also well-known Appeon MVPs such as: Bruce Armstrong, Marco Meoni, Michael Kramer, and Matt Balent, just to mention a few. There will also be a host of presentations from real-life Appeon customers who will educate you how they overcame project challenges or used new features of PowerBuilder.

The daily agenda will start with a continental breakfast at 8:00am followed by Education Sessions from 9:00am to 12:00pm, where afterwards lunch will be served. Following lunch, the Education Sessions will continue from 1:00pm through until 5:00pm. On the last day, the Education Sessions will conclude earlier at 3:00pm for those wanting to catch an early flight or drive back home.

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