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.
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.
