[progress News] [progress Openedge Abl] Workshop At The Emea Pug 2016? Challenge Accepted!

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Boyan Dimitrov

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This year's EMEA PUG featured great sessions on Sitefinity, NativeScript, OpenEdge and more. I was excited to present on Kendo UI for OpenEdge myself.

Attending a professional development conference is energizing, but it can sometimes be an exhausting experience. Definitely as first-timer in running a workshop I felt both of these things, but at the end I felt the state of "nirvana." One of the best things that can happen to someone is to hear the applause for a job well done. This makes you feel that all the hard work and effort you put in was not in vain.

Engaging with Developers at EMEA PUG


The professional development conference I’m referring to is the annual EMEA PUG (Progress User Group) Challenge conference, where I had the pleasure to lead a workshop last month. PUGs are a valuable opportunity for partners with common pain points to engage with each other learn how to boost their business.

The three-day event is sponsored by Progress and its partners and is aimed primarily at the Progress developer community. Luckily for me most of the sessions were technical (I’m an engineer myself), but no worries, the UX guys were not left without activities J. The emphasis was on established technologies like OpenEdge and ABL, but there were also plenty of sessions about Sitefinity, NativeScript and Kendo UI, as well as ones regarding database administration, security and UX.

This year the EMEA PUG Challenge was held in Noordwijk, Netherlands, a beautiful town south of Amsterdam. The "Huis ter Tuin" hotel is situated on the coast and there was a stunning view of the North Sea. From the hotel one can go directly to the beach—a nice way to chill. I am glad that there are plenty of nice photos to share my excitement with you.

emea-pug-hotel.jpg


There were eight halls of varying capacity simultaneously hosting sessions and workshops.

Favorite Sessions: NativeScript, OpenEdge and Kendo UI


The most notable ones I visited were NativeScript (with AngularJS 2) by Julian Steiner & Sebastian Witalec. At the end of the session Sebastian showed off a NativeScript application to interact with and control real robots from his mobile device. He brought an entire army of “minions” with himself. J Overall it was a really good session.

Next was The NativeScript PUG App Challenge by Bronco Oostermeyer and Roel Lakenvelt. They talked about the challenges they faced while they were developing the official application for the event. Each attendee was able to rate a specific session or check the entire program really quickly.

Then came Kendo UI Builder—Modernization Platform for the Web, by Shelley Chase. This is a great product that significantly accelerates OpenEdge modernization efforts and provides a modern look without requiring any JavaScript code.

Kendo UI for OpenEdge


Today, more than ever, users are demanding a rich interactive web experience. You have an existing OpenEdge application and you want it on the web? Welcome to my workshop!

The main focus of my session was to explain how easy it is to integrate an existing OpenEdge application with Kendo UI. Progress JSDO makes the communication between the Kendo UI and OpenEdge backend services easier than ever. I realized that three hours could be insufficient to go through the very basics of Kendo UI and then reach some more complex subjects as integration with OpenEdge or AngularJS. There is so much amazing stuff that I did not even have time to go into.

Anyway I was pleased to be part of that! There were even not enough chairs for all the attendees and I hope we managed to create a productive discussion around the product and that everyone learned something new. I was amazed to see so many people recognizing Kendo UI as a key product for modernizing their applications.

Playing Hard and Getting to Know Each Other


Of course it was not all about sessions and workshops. There were some fun events like a disco night, table football, cycling challenge and more. However getting to know the people and talking about technology was what I enjoyed most.

See You in Prague


This was my first participation in EMEA PUG Challenge and my impressions are very positive. There were approximately 500 attendees and more than 80 sessions and workshops. Next year's event is going to be in Prague (how awesome is that!). Can’t wait to see you there!

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