Looking back at Mendix World

Impressive event

As Mendix themselves described it “Mendix World is a must-attend event for anyone serious about digital innovation!” and they were right. Not only did the two day event have an impressive 2600 people registered, the list of speakers and breakout sessions was just as impressive.

The event had a dream start at the “Day 0” partner event. After being the runner-up twice, Bizzomate was finally awarded “Partner of the Year” and we could not be more proud of our team and our customers. And the event still had to start!

Vlaai, Vlaai, Vlaai!

Bizzomate had a stand on the expo floor, right next to the coffee counter and that was very convenient as we were serving pie. And not just any pie: we brought fresh Vlaai from Limburg, which is a famous local speciality from the home province of the Bizzomate headquarters. As we brought four different kinds, we came up with a nice gimmick to help people to select the correct Vlaai for them. Using one of Bizzomates specialities, a Decision Model in Avola Decision, people could answer a few simple questions in our Mendix questionnaire and Avola would give you your personal Vlaai advice. We had set up 3 demo stations and they were occupied most of the day! Being able to speak to as many customers, prospects and partners, I spent as much time as I could at our stand, but luckily I was able to visit a few breakout and keynote sessions as well.

Simon Wardley

Simon Wardley closed day one with his spot-on vision on the future and designing strategy, using clear and sometimes funny analogies, like paintball. He made us reflect upon how businesses prepare for the future and how creating an actual map to lead the way is a lot more sensible than what most companies do. His funny comment on the Blah Blah template inspired me to wear my BlahBlah skirt the next day and I was rewarded with a picture with both Simon Wardley and Geoffrey Moore!

Mendix 7

Opening day 2 was a live demo of a selection of some of the new features in Mendix 7. Johan Den Haan, Mendix’ CTO did a great job at getting the room worked up about the 8 new/improved items that will be released this fall. Smart App being an important theme using great out of the box integrations with IBM Watson tools (amongst other things).

Geoffrey Moore

Geoffrey Moore blew everyone away with his closing keynote, Twitter exploded with pictures from his slides and his smart one liners. He explained to the audience how to face the Horizon 2 challenge. How does an organisation find a way to keep the day to day business running and move innovation from lab to reality. As a welcome change to the usual threats stated around disruption, he offered a practical solution to survive.

A session for every taste

I also attended sessions on designing user experience, using the Swiss Public Transport company as an example. Being in business development account management I also visited a session in the Customer Success Track. Mendix has a successful Customer Success Management program to make sure that the current high customer retention percentage remains at this high level.

My technical colleagues visited the more technical tracks on the SDK and Smart Apps and we had customers taking the developer training – they actually had a track for every profile.

At the end of the two days, we had one of the local “food banks” (a charity feeding up to around 200 less fortunate families in Rotterdam every week) pick up the remaining Vlaai – we brought too many!

We look forward to Mendix World next year – they set the bar high, but I am confident it will be a success again.