For the second time I was invited to join the Norwegian IBM User Group event in Oslo. I knew what to expect and again the organisers did a great job. Despite a smaller amount of attendees the sponsor line-up was awesome and this time entirely from local business partners. Times are hard for user groups in the ICS branch but the overall mood upon attendees and sponsors were positive. Norway and the other Scandinavian countries are a real fanbase for IBM Domino and Connections so it was consequential for IBMers to speak there, too. We had Mac Guidera, Collaboration Strategist for ICS, as a keynote speaker as well as Barry Rosen, Product and Offering Manager for IBM Domino. Along with those guys we were happy to have our very own IBM Champion wrangler Amanda Bauman („Batman“) with us. This year’s event was more focused on local customers so most of the sessions were held in Norwegian or Danish language (I didn’t know that Norwegians are able to understand Danish by the way…).
We4IT was happy to present two sessions: my session about utilising IBM Watson Language Understanding in your own XPages apps and my colleague Peer about our product „aveedo“ with a real time demo showing how to bring your legacy apps to the web and mobile devices.
Special thanks go to Roger, former president of the ISBG board, for inviting us again and the whole team around Hogne, Vanessa, Wenke and Rolf for the great organisation!
Joining ISBG is also like „coming home“ once you enjoyed being there. After the „official“ time you are always welcome to the dinner and the „nachspel“ (after party) which usually takes place in Vanessa’s own hotel room/suite. This is a unique event and only available in Norway - believe me! Having drinks and good conversations is always a good way to end a day.
I hope you will continue with your event next year and I wish the new board the best of luck! Of course we would be happy to join again
I put up some visual impression here.