There are conferences you attend, and there are conferences that feel a little like coming home. For many of us in the Notes and Domino world, Engage is the latter. This year the community gathered in Ghent, Belgium — 259 attendees in total, including 108 Business Partners — in a venue that gave the whole week a special flavour: a stadium. Sessions, hallway chats, and coffee breaks inside a football ground made for an unusual and surprisingly inspiring backdrop.
I travelled to Ghent with my colleagues Florian Vogler and Franz Walder, and together we had the privilege of delivering a workshop and three sessions. What follows is my personal recap — the sessions, the booth, the social moments, and the themes that stood out.
Monday: “How To Train Your Domino Dragon with AI”
We kicked off on Monday, April 20, with our half-day panagenda workshop — a fast-paced, deliberately fun tour through what AI is actually doing to our work right now. Highlights:
- AI is disrupting panagenda for real, with development speed up 4–6x — but only where deep product expertise sits on top.
- Diaries of a Vibe Coder — Franz’s multi-model “Conversation Orchestrator” POC alongside iDNA.
- Domino IQ, — new 14.5.1 features (NVIDIA CUDA, Guard Models, RAG) and where it still needs to grow.
- State of the Union — Rich Client still beats Nomad Web, Domino IQ shows promise but isn’t there yet, and sovereignty is becoming a key driver.
- A live integration into Claude via embedded wiki, a skill, and MCP talking to real iDNA data.
Tuesday and Wednesday: Three panagendians on stage
Franz Walder — “Data Retention Compliance: Know What You Must Keep” (Tue & Wed morning). A practical framework for using Content Age and retention analytics to separate legally protected Domino records from content that can be safely archived.
Florian Vogler — “Move It! 64-Bit, Nomad & more” (Wed morning). Classic Florian — a no-fluff decision framework on why, how, what, and when to modernise Notes clients and applications without breaking what already works.
Marc Thomas — “Inside HCL Notes 2026 Upgrade” (Wed afternoon). Everything admins need for a clean 14.5.1 rollout, with one headline many people took away: HCL Notes 14.5.1 installs 61% faster than 14.5.0 — 24s vs. 62s per endpoint. Bonus track: Daniel Nashed’s nshcpuset workaround for the hybrid-CPU E-Core scheduling issue.
The Booth: iDNA, and a Prototype That Got People Talking
Our booth ran full-portfolio demos all week. A small spotlight this year was on iDNA for application intelligence and modernisation readiness. One prototype we were most excited to show was a working MCP server as a Notes Client plugin — a real, live integration that lets AI assistants talk to Notes/Domino in a structured way. It wasn’t a slide; it was running on a laptop and happy to answer questions. The number of “wait, you can already do this?” reactions made the week.
Keynote: HCL Sets the Direction
Richard Jefts and the HCL keynote on Tuesday morning were unmistakably shaped by AI. The direction for the next 12 months was clear: Agentic AI, Vibe Coding, and Generative AI across the product line. Richard also announced new partnerships with Collabra and IONOS, and teased Domino Workspace, expected mid-year. Throughout the conference, every product area — Domino/Notes, Sametime, Connections — had its own dedicated roadmap session. Seeing that progress, publicly and consistently, was genuinely well received by the community.
And one more moment I have to mention: during the Welcome speech, our colleague Christoph Adler made it onto the big stage with a short message. Christoph couldn’t be with us in Ghent this year for private reasons, but he still managed to wish everyone a great conference from afar. He would have loved the reaction from the room — it was exactly the kind of appearance that feels like family.
The Ghent Effect: Stadium, RAY, and Wintercircus
Ghent is a beautiful city, and the organisers used it well. On Monday evening, after the workshops, we joined the other speakers and attendees at the Ambassadors Welcome Reception at RAY, right in the heart of the city. Reconnecting with the HCL Ambassadors in person is one of those things that never gets old.
Tuesday evening then delivered the traditional highlight: the engage Dinner at Wintercircus. At 19:00 the whole conference travelled together to this beautifully restored old circus building for an evening of great food and even better conversations. Unusual venue, perfect atmosphere — exactly the kind of shared experience that makes Engage feel less like a conference and more like a reunion.
See You at the Next One
That’s the feeling I’m taking home from Ghent: AI is changing our daily work faster than any of us expected, the HCL roadmap is moving visibly forward, and the Notes/Domino community still knows how to gather, share, and celebrate. Whether you dropped by our booth, attended one of our sessions, or simply shared a Belgian beer with us — thank you. Already looking forward to the next one.
panagenda was proud to be sponsoring, on stage, at the booth, and around every dinner table at Engage 2026. If you’d like to pick up any of the topics above — Domino upgrades, 64-bit/Nomad modernisation, retention compliance, or our AI work around iDNA — just reach out, we’re happy to continue the conversation.
