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Mobility Keynote
After a short break, we had the Mobility Keynote (http://s3.podiumsystems.com/sybase/techwave2007/keynote2.html ) with presentations by Raj Nathan (senior VP and CMO), Terry Stepien (president, Sybase iAnywhere), and Marty Beard (president, Sybase 365). Unfortunately, some of the material overlapped, and so the general impression was that although Sybase may finally have a unified vision, they have some work to do to implement it. No matter if the products are aligned, it still seems rather odd that representatives from three different companies within the parent company need to present the information (much of it the same) to us.

The one thing of particular interest that was discussed during the mobility keynotes was an emphasis on a "unified development tool." It didn't sound like any one particular existing Sybase development tool, but rather a merging of the different capabilities of the various tools into one best-of-breed tool.

Customer Panel
The mobility keynote was immediately followed by a customer panel chaired by Lars Vestergaard (IDC) and consisting of Johnathan Sher (HTC), Ed Schmit (AT&T), Michael Lowery (Revolution Consulting), and Jay Hennings (Accenture). You would think with that kind of firepower it would be a fascinating discussion. It was exactly the opposite. For what I believe are a number of reasons, most of the audience walked out during the customer panel. These customer panels have worked in the past; however, they just didn't work this time around. Some lessons learned might include:

• Do something to liven up the customer panel, perhaps by video taping the customer panel to allow editing and perhaps mixing in live action footage to emphasize points.
• Don't have any session longer than an hour without at least a short break between sections. Some people may have been forced to leave to relieve themselves and then didn't bother coming back.
• Sessions immediately before lunch must end on time. Don't force people to choose between staying through the end and lunch.

Innovation Awards
The last item before lunch was the Innovation Awards, which were won by Accenture, Colonial Supplemental Insurance, Simbex, BNP Paribas Security Services and Fidelity Investments. It was really a shame that so many people had left the audience by the time the awards started.

PowerLunch
As with prior TechWaves, there was a PowerLunch in which seating was arranged by topic areas. You simply find the topic you are interested in and see if there is space available at the table dedicated to that topic. For the folks who aren't interested in having a topic discussion, there are also tables that are unassigned. As in previous years, the problem I have with it is that there is not enough room for the popular topics and there are other topic tables that are absolutely empty. By the time I got there, the topic areas I wanted to have a discussion at were full. I ended up picking one of the topic tables that was empty, and soon after was joined by a few other folks who were also just looking for an empty seat, not a discussion of that particular topic.

Perhaps next year there could be larger discussion areas for a particular topic as well as broader topics. That might help avoid the overcrowding of some topic areas and eliminate the topics with no audience (as they would be combined into other more popular topics).

Tuesday Afternoon/Evening
Plenary Session
After lunch were the "plenary" sessions, one each for databases and development tools, each held concurrently. As you might expect, I went to the development tools presentation. It was rather well attended, although it was obvious over the next few days that a number of the people who would have been interested didn't know that "plenary" meant it was open to everyone. Quite a few people didn't realize what it was and didn't attend as a result.

That's too bad, because the session, particularly the PowerBuilder "in the lab" features demo, brought back that "wow" factor we've been missing for the past few years. Fortunately, there is a recorded Webcast (http://s3.podiumsystems.com/sybase/techwave2007/pln01.html), and the company that did the Webcast did a much better job than whoever did it last year. There was also a recorded Webcast (http://s3.podiumsystems.com/sybase/techwave2007/pln02.html) of the database plenary session. Some of the "in the labs" discussion and demo touched on:
1.  Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Workshop - showed WPF being edited and consumed within PowerBuilder and visual inheritance of third-party controls

2.  New Script Editor with:
•  Collapsible regions
•  Outlining text markers in the editor
•  Updated autoscript
•  Auto-highlighting of matching parenthesis
•  Splitter bars

3.  The "DataWindow of the Future", which includes:
•  Fully managed code
•  New graphing capability

At one point early on in the demo, the presenters donned welding masks to protect their eyes from the rich GUI experience that PowerBuilder developers would not normally be accustomed to.

PowerBuilder 11 New Features Class
Education sessions started up after the plenary, and my choice was the PowerBuilder 11 New Features class. Unfortunately (for me at least, fortunately for Sybase) the original session filled up quickly, so by the time I decided to register for it I got "stuck" in an overflow session. The overflow session was led by Dave Fish and Jim O'Neil. You probably couldn't get much better instructors as they have an in-depth knowledge of the product. It didn't have the labs, but for someone who was heavily involved in the beta (i.e., me) I didn't really miss it. I picked this session to see what new features of the beta I may have missed. There was a lot added for this release, and so during the beta I had to focus on those that were most important to me. Even an old dog like me picked up a few new pieces of information.

The important take away is that the events related to PowerBuilder, and particularly PowerBuilder 11, were packed throughout the conference. I haven't seen this much excitement about a new release of PowerBuilder in years.

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