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Conference Highlights!

General Session
A lively music/technology experience set the stage for an engaging general session as host Dave Olson, Director Enterprise Solutions, Progress Software, compared application development to composing and performing music. Olson cued the live band with a quick demonstration—guitars ("a little MRP funk", keyboards ("some HR on the Hammond B-3"), and drums and horns ("a little classic Batch processing".) With music as the metaphor live product demos featuring Sonic ESB, APAMA and OpenEdge were conducted by key Progress executives. And, Joe Alsop, Co-founder and CEO, Progress Software, spoke about the state of the company, successes throughout the past year and technology trends.

Technical Sessions
The technical program was another big success this year with even more sessions and a new track dedicated to advanced Sonic topics. Over a hundred different sessions, including four Birds of a Feather sessions and 11 customer case studies, packed the agenda with the latest information on the complete portfolio of Progress products. You can download any session presentation or an entire track from the sessions page of this site. And, learn more about case studies showing innovation in action. The agenda displays the complete schedule of sessions.

Birds of a Feather Sessions
These sessions provide attendees with a chance to meet each other, discuss issues and challenges, exchange ideas and share solutions in an informal atmosphere. Topics included large development shops, deployment and support, benefiting from OpenEdge 10 and Software as a Service (SaaS). The turnout was better than expected with many lively discussions.

New Sonic Track
The Sonic track was well attended and delivered on its promise to help customers get the most from their ESB. Sessions included several presented by customers. "This session was so good there isn"t even a choice to check [on the feedback form] for how good this session was!" noted one attendee from Iron Mountain at the end of "Global Approach to SOA Enabled by Sonic ESB," presented by Stephen Davies, Executive Director, IT R&D and Medical Systems for Boehringer Ingelheim.  And, in the "Introduction to BPEL" session, our own Sonic guru, Andi Abes, had the audience hanging on his every word. His dry wit not only illuminated BPEL as valuable and accessible, but also elicited chuckles from Joe Alsop himself, listening from the back of the room.

Hands-On Workshops
Packed workshops were well received with half selling out this year. New workshops offered four-hour sessions covering a wide range of development topics as well as database administration. Developers and architects learned the OpenEdge Architect IDE and what it can do for them, were introduced to object-oriented programming and how to start doing it in ABL, studied the layers and components of the OERA and went through a sample implementation, and how to do integration with Sonic ESB and OpenEdge. DBAs learned tips and techniques on how to do the daily tasks of their job.

Wizard's Words
Each year our resident Wizard, Gus Björklund, gives his personal observations and highlights of the Exchange conference. This year was no exception. From the moment he leaves Boston to his flight home find out what going to Exchange is really like.

The Expo 2007
This year the Expo took on a new shape—with more hours and more access to see the latest products, participate in hands-on demonstrations and engage in informal, one-on-one discussions with our Partners and Progress experts. Visitors poured over the Progress booth which showcased the latest innovations across the complete portfolio of Progress technologies and services.

Partner Exchange 2007
Formerly the Global Business Form, the Partner Exchange 2007 was the largest yet with more than 120 invited participants—CEOs and founders of top Progress Partner organizations. Back for the fifth year in a row this exclusive event offers collaboration, networking and sharing of ideas with both Progress experts and an executive peer group. Under the theme of Partnering in the New Market, the program was rich in content, advice and opinions from experts in many fields and featured examples of organizations using business innovation to expand their market, change business models or leverage new technologies.

CIO Exchange 2007
This small, intimately-sized forum offered top CIO attendees the chance to collaborate with their peers and Progress executives while exploring the unique challenges and needs faced by CIOs today.

Poster Fair at the Welcome Reception
Over 20 posters covered a range of subjects such as: Sonic tuning tips; adding business activity monitoring (BAM) to your OpenEdge application; upcoming OpenEdge advanced user interface tools; OpenEdge platforms and compatibility; Sonic BPEL Server; OpenEdge principles; and, PSDN. In addition, Progress product managers, developers and executives were on-hand to discuss how to use Progress products and hear your enhancement requests.