Mendix World 2019 - Day One

The day has finally arrived! After an exciting Partner Day where we got a sneak peek, we were excited to join the 5,000 other participants for Derek’s Keynote at the Ahoy Rotterdam. The crowd and venue did not disappoint and we were treated to the new Mendix slogan which I feel captures the spirit of Rapid App Development perfectly: Go Make It

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Derek reminded us of the humble beginnings of Mendix and shared the exponential growth they have seen since starting the Rapid App Dev movement back in 2006.

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Marc Gaell, SVP Global Head of Platfrom and Technologies Ecosystem for SAP, joined Derek onstage to discuss the strategic partnership between SAP, Mendix, and Siemens. Hopefully this assuages the fears some have about those relationships as they are confidentially working together as Mendix has already become the third largest SOLEX SAP Cloud Platform solution. (I believe he said largest but might have been fastest growing). The best part was the announcement of Mendix deployed on SAP HANA (cloud or on-Premier), which opens many possibilities our clients have requested for leveraging their investments and analytic platforms.

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One the clients we have helped train and deliver Mendix solutions for ongoing is CanadaPost, the Canadian postal service. They are lead by Anik Dubreuill who joined Derek onstage to discuss what it has meant to revolutionize and update the technology stack so a 200 year+ company could compete with the like of Amazon. We’ve built some great things together and their team is very talented. I look forward to continued projects that transform the way parcels are delivered to Canadians and possibly change the way this works for others across the globe that follow suit!

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Derek introduced us to a few new features that I’m excited to finally see announced! The Native Mobile allows us to develop apps with Mendix and bolster our offline/feature connectivity by leveraging React and React.js. This is a very big deal and I’m very curious to get some answers to our pressing questions about PhoneGap mobile app conversion pathing, iOS vs Android potential forks and codebase, and offline comparisons.

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The Data Hub announcement is the new tool I am most excited for! I’ve been wanting to architect more microservice solutions but without a proper management tool for the services, I have been reluctant. I have a lot of ideas of what I hope this tool is or becomes, but this is definitely the step needed in the right direction!

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In the afternoon, I was fortunate to speak with Ruben Fechner who is responsible for the great work (which was later awarded with a coveted Impact Award!) at Erie Insurance. They have faced many challenges and pressures in the insurance industry and found like many of our clients that Mendix allows them to deliver more value and better user/agent experiences with the same or even less resources.

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I had to take a break in the VIP lounge and get a cappuccino with our logo made in edible ink!

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The show floor was busy and hustling about were Mendix employees, partners, and clients. I’m told the ratios were 2:1 clients to the rest of us which is great to see that much enthusiasm!

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They gave out Impact Awards to customers for various leadership and results. I was especially proud that one of the winning apps was one that we helped design and deliver with ConocoPhilips!

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After the award, in typical Dutch fashion, a party was staged and good times were had by all. We headed out from there for a strategic dinner at a fantastic Indian restaurant and headed back to the hotel. Another late night and early morning, but we are ready for round two! 

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