[jbpm-dev] bpm think tank

[Tom Baeyens]

Hi,

Here's my short report on the BPM Think Thank last tuesday and wednesday.

Great networking opportunities.  Small, but relevant crowd.  Lots of time to hang 
around with Jan Baan (ex Baan, now Cordys), Phil Gilbert (Lombardi), Derek Miers 
(loudmouth with way too much influence compared to his knowledge:), John Pyke (ex 
Staffware, now Cordys) and some tibco guys.

It's another kind of world then where we typically live in.  It was all business 
level talks.  Normally I shy away from this world, but it was a really good 
experience to be soaked in it for 2 full days.  I now know a lot better what world 
people like Burr live in.  And I much better understand their needs.  Whether we can 
satisfy those with the resources we have in the short term is of course another topic :-)

Especially Phil Gilbert made a very big impression on me.  He gave what could have 
been a historic visionary speach.  "This technology is going to change the whole 
industry"-type of talk.  But then doing this in front of only 35 people is kind a 
painful.  I already saw some indications before that this conference was declining, 
but this talk made the confrontation could not have been bigger.

The roundtables still had the flavour of the original idea around the think tank: 
inspiring people, broad topics always lead to new insights.  This was great.  I even 
got some very concrete new ideas that we'll apply during the development of jBPM 4.

One downside was that the conference didn't have the ambition any more to come out 
with new positions on what is to be relevant in the industry.  All the relevant 
discussion is currently going on in BPMN 2.0 and ideally that discussion would have 
been held in public.  The crowd was certainly small and knowledgeable enough to 
discuss these topics.

IBM and SAP weren't present.  I assume that this is a consequence of the previous 
paragraph, but it might also be the other way round.

Second downside was that a lot of preaching to the choir happened.

Overall it was still time spend worth while.  The networking, roundtables and getting 
soaked in business requirements made it great.

-- 
regards, tom.