Elevate 2024

Appeon announced in their May 2024 newsletter that Elevate 2024 will be an online event on December 2-3, 2024.  They also indicated that the call for papers will open in June of 2024.

Elevate 2023 Review

Intro

Elevate 2023 was a bit different than the last three Elevates ( 2020, 2021 and 2022).  It was still online and free like the last three.  However, this one was one day only and only had a single track.  Nonetheless, I thought it went well.  In fact, based on the content of the chat it seems like the participants were more excited about the new (2022 R2) and planned (2025) features than they have been for some time.

Registration

Since there was only one track this year, registration was just a matter of indicating that you wanted to attend.  The actual schedule content didn't get published until the 17th ( 3 days before the conference ) but since there was only one track that really didn't bother me.

Keynote

Armeen Mazda (Appeon CEO) gave the initial keynote, which gave more of the 30,000 foot view of what Appeon has been doing with the product in the past and where they are going with it.

He also gave some stats about the PowerBuilder client base I thought was interesting.

That was followed by Jose Miguel Rodriquez of the Provincial Council of Almeria.  He gave a customer success story about their move to PowerServer.

Then came Julie Jiang, Product Manager at Appeon.   She indicated that the LTS version of 2022 will be released in December of 2023 (it's currently in beta) and that the beta of the 2025 release is currently scheduled for end of year 2024.  She then talked about the major new features planned for 2025, in particular:

• New Editor
• New Compiler
• Plain Text Source Code
• 64 bit IDE

She also presented some results from their latest annual survey of their customer base I though was interesting.

The last speaker in the keynote was Chris Pollach, Director of Developer Relations at Appeon.  He gave a bit more of a deep dive into the planned 2025 new features and demonstrated some of them.  Here's a couple of his slides explaining why the are planning to redo the compiler;

Here's a screen shot from the new IDE where you can see the options to keep the old workspace approach (old compiler) or move to the new solution approach (new compiler).  Note that this is a one-way move, you can't move back.

And some benchmarks on how much faster the new compiler is.

Finally some screen shots showing the new features in the new editor.  Note that some of the features will be in the GA release and some won't be introduced until the R2 release.

Cafe Chat

As they've done since Elevate 2021, there was a one hour free flowing chat cafe.

Technical Sessions

The next speaker was Marco Meoni, a fellow Appeon MVP.  He gave an overview of the new features in PowerServer 2022 R2 as well as a brush up on some of the core features of the product.

That was followed by a rather long session broken into two parts where I discussed the new features in PowerBuilder 2022 R2.

I then followed with another session on how to migrate to PowerBuilder 2022 R2.  This wasn't about the new features as much as it was about prior features that were removed or modified since PowerBuilder 8 and how to mitigate some of them.  It included a walkthrough of an application I migrated recently and some of the changes I needed to make.

Marco then spoke again for the last session where he talked about how to migrate a 2-tier PowerBuilder application to a 3-tier PowerServer application.

Recommendations

Conference closing session:  Something that has always bothered me about PowerBuilder conferences i that they tend to open with a bang and then end in a fizzle (this is going all the way back to the PowerSoft days).  Up until recently they were multi-day in person events.  The last day was often only a half day and a number of attendees used it for travel back home and were unable to attend sessions on that day.  At some of them we had open sessions for enhancement feedback.  What I'm thinking about is something along these lines:  How to Close Out a Conference with Style

Consider doing it in person again:  As you may know, Armeen and I did a tour of four European cities in late October where we presented early versions of our sessions for Elevate 2023.  Marco joined us at three of this cities with his as well.  There's nothing quite like being able to have extended conversations in person about the product.  I'm thinking that given that PowerBuilder 2025 won't be in beta until the end of 2024 it might make sense to wait until 2025 to have an in person Elevate again.  Around November 2024 all we might have to talk about is a still unreleased product.  By November 2025 though we should have a lot of new major features that are released to talk about.  However, what Appeon probably needs to hear though is not just that we want to be in person, but that we are actually committed to attending an in-person event again.  It seems to be that in the BC era (Before COVID) attendance had been declining from the 2017 Elevate through the 2019 Elevate.  Appeon will want to know there is sufficient interest in doing an in-person event before they're going to invest the resources it needs to make to make such an event successful. 

Elevate 2023

The Appeon website now provides information on Elevate 2023.  It will be a one-day online event on November 20th.  Registration opens on October 17th.

ISUG-TECH 2024-2025 Term Nomination Period

The nomination period for this year's election for the The Independent SAP Technical User Group (ISUG-TECH) board is Monday, October 2nd until 5:00pm EDT on Friday, October 13th, 2023.  The nomination form will appear on the ISUG-TECH website (https://www.isug.com/) once the nomination period opens.

Any member may nominate another member to serve; however, only regular (paid) members may vote in the election. Nominees must be both qualified for the position they are nominated for and be willing to serve for their nomination to be considered. The available positions are listed on the nomination form, you may complete it multiple times to nominate more than one person.

The election will run from November 6th - 17th, 2023 *.

(*) California State law permits a non-profit organization to forgo an election if there are no contested positions on the ballot.

ISUG-TECH Annual Meeting - Sept 26th

The Independent SAP Technical User Group (ISUG-TECH) will hold its annual member meeting on Tuesday, September 26, 2023 at 11:00 CT. The meeting will be held through via Zoom and you must register at the link provided below to attend.

All members are invited to attend, although Associate Members will not be permitted to vote on any pending action required by the membership. We hope you will participate in this important aspect of your ISUG-TECH membership. If you are unable to attend, minutes of the meeting will be available afterwards, as well as (we hope) a recording of the meeting.

https://www.isug.com/events/user-group-meetings/event/1516-isug-annual-member-s-meeting

Missions Trip to the Navajo Nation

     

From June 3rd to June 10th, 2023 I travelled with a team of 31 from Saddleback Church to the town of Dilkon, Arizona in the Navajo Nation.  We were there to support the Dilkon Church of the Nazarene (DilkonNaz). (That's my Jeep above on the drive from Winslow, where we were staying each night, to the town of Dilkon).

European User Group Meetings

 As indicated in the Appeon Newsletter for June of 2023, Armeen Mazda, Appeon CEO and myself will be presenting information about the latest PowerBuilder update (2022 R2) at a number of user group meetings in Europe in October 2023 as follows:

• October 17: Florence, Italy
• October 19: Valencia, Spain
• October 23 - 24: Berlin, Germany
• October 26: Zurich, Switzerland