This year, Engage 2023 was held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and, as usual, panagenda was there as a platinum sponsor. Visions and strategies for the future, networking, warp speed presentations, and — of course — the famous Engage Prize Draw. This year’s conference did not disappoint!
Sunday: Arrival
We came from all over Germany: Ganderkesee, Oberwesel, Langen, and Heppenheim. With King’s Day closing in, driving in Amsterdam becomes impossible, so we decided to park some 40 minutes outside of Amsterdam to take the tram to the city, which greeted us with rainy and cold weather. But hey, it’s still Amsterdam, with its beautiful canals, innumerable bicycles, bridges, and houseboats!
Monday: Pre-Event Day
The room in which we held our workshop was amazing (what an amazing ceiling!). Not only that, we had an amazing audience and got to meet many known and new faces, who contributed with valuable input and made it a pleasure to present. We covered everything from client options and strategies to live demos of application analytics, upgrades, nomad web config and roaming, and much more. Having only one host, however, can make a workshop hard to digest, especially with so much information. That’s why we decided to have multiple hosts, which turned out to be the right decision. We were happy to help the participants, many of which, as it turns out, were struggling with Nomad and Notes. Thank you to all who attended! If you couldn’t attend, don’t worry: check out our current HCL Expert Talks, in which we cover most of the topics discussed during our workshop.
Tuesday: HCL’s Vision, Many Sessions, and Warp Speed Presentations
So many familiar faces! Lots of new faces, too. Theo Heselmans and Hilde Aerts, who make Engage a true success and amazing experience every year, kicked off the official first of two conference days by welcoming everyone, thus lifting the spirits for the first keynote.
Theo and Hilde then passed the ball to Richard Jefts, from HCL, who shared the company’s strategy and vision across their broad portfolio. Together with Volt MX, HCL highlighted Nomad (iOS, Android, and Web) as key building blocks for the future, and shared valuable insights into their plans and investments. While HCL’s main focus is clearly on applications, collaboration is still important to the company. Similar to how panagenda strengthens HCL’s offerings, OnTime Group Calendar is now their strategic partner for calendaring — congratulations!
In the afternoon, our very own Franz Walder held his “What’s the future of your Domino Applications?” session and was given amazing feedback from the attendees. The end of day 1 was marked by speed sponsoring, with warp speed presentations and demos of 3 minutes for 8 groups in a row while the bar was open. As always, it was a blast!
To round off the day, Theo Heselmans invited us for his famous “Engage Dinner”. This time it took place in the oldest non-religious building in Amsterdam, dating back to the 15th century. Awesome place, with fantastic food, and great discussions! Did you know that some people actually traveled all the way from Australia (ISW) and the USA (HCL) to be at Engage?
Wednesday: Good Talks & Prize Draw
The last Day of Engage 2023 started at 8 AM with some very interesting sessions; that is Theo’s way to get people to attend that early. One of the most interesting sessions, “HCL Nomad Deep Dive: Reimagine your Notes Client Deployment”, was held by HCL’s Maxx Sutton.
Later that morning, Christoph Adler held his session “EVERYTHING you need to know about HCL Nomad Web” while Femke Goedhart co-moderated her “The HCL Connections Round Table – Let’s Connect, Learn and Share” with our friend Jörg Rafflenbeul.
The whole day was characterized by many interesting conversations at our booth and ended officially with the famous Engage prize draw. The grand prize, an Elgato StreamDeck, went to our dear friend from GroupWave, Kris De Bisschop.
Wrapping Up
The next Engage will take place in Antwerp in 2024 and it will be the last one organized by Theo Heselmans. Thank you, Theo, Hilde, and the whole Engage Team for doing an awesome job! panagenda will be back for more. See you in Antwerp!
