RevCon 2010 - Rio, Las Vegas.

Despite the economic pressures, last week saw nearly 100 Revelation users, developers, vendors and resellers arrive in Las Vegas for yet another busy and exciting Revelation conference. I was kept so busy with learning and networking that I never even got to touch my blog, despite my plans to post each evening. However, I did have my camcorder and you can see some of the presenters in my YouTube conference video.

The conference reception was held on Tuesday evening atop the Rio Casino and Hotel and it gave everyone an opportunity to catch up with existing friends from around the Revelation community and to also meet some new friends, not least Erik and Jared, being the two newest members of the Revelation Team at the conference. With gusts of wind reaching over 40mph and being 50 floors up, the reception was a windy one, with spectacular views across the Las Vegas Strip as the sun set.

The conference kicked off for real on the Wednesday, with Mike Ruane’s opening remarks (Video Part One / Video Part Two) following breakfast and punctuated by a keynote from Tom Wilson, President of Database Trends and Applications Magazine and Unisphere Research. Tom spoke about the predicted year ahead in information management and touched on the key trends for the whole IT Industry and their relevance to the MultiValue marketplace in particular. One of the key points from the keynote was that whilst budgets are still being restricted, business still wants more from their IT departments, an area that MultiValue vendors and developers are well placed to exploit.

Revelation Software’s official conference wrap-up contains a mention for all of the technical presentations, but over the next two and a half days attendees were treated to two technical tracks with over 20 presentations ranging from OpenInsight 9.2, the SQL connector and O4W, through to full on technical talks on The Web Browser Control, Interaction with MS Office (a new way), Using MVC concepts, Virtual Server solutions, Trouble Shooting OI Applications and much more.

The first full day was rounded off with dinner in the conference centre and an evening performance from Penn & Teller. Whilst some insight into some of the tricks was provided, they still left you baffled and wanting more. The second day concluded with a very busy Vendor Fair providing vendors and attendees with the perfect forum to meet and discuss just about anything, plus an opportunity to win a Netbook ( Revelation Software, Inc. ) and an iPod ( TigerLogic (D3) ), both winners were drawn at the conference close.

Friday, the final day, saw two O4W presentations from Bob Catalano and Bryan Shumsky back to back - two of the biggest draws across the whole event. However, Clay Borne from CLB IT and Andrew McAuley from Sprezzatura (presenting at the same time as the O4W talks) still had a good attendance at their presentations looking at ‘Web Applications Using Abobe Flex and OI’ and ‘Troubleshooting OI Applications – the Logging Approach’, respectively. Bryan’s talk (video coming soon) was especially well received with a visual explanation of Web2.0 followed by clear examples of using the O4W APIs.

The whole event was then closed by Mike Ruane (Video Part One /Video Part Two) with a suggestion of 64-bit OpenInsight and a return to Las Vegas during 2011 for more of the same – watch http://www.revelation.com/ during mid 2011 for more details.

Finally, I would personally like to thank Mike, Nancy and the whole Revelation team for hosting a great event and also a very big thank you to all of the speakers who gave up their time to plan, write and deliver some of the best and most informative presentations yet. I look forward to see your all (and a few more new faces) for the next Revelation Conference at the Rio in Las Vegas sometime in late 2011.

Click here for the RevCon 2010 Video PlayList featuring all of the videos noted in this posting.