TechCon2006 in Las Vegas Sizzles

OSAS Conference is Hot

European End Users Meet in Germany

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TechCon2006 in Las Vegas Sizzles

Laurence Guiney Senior Account Manager

as Vegas is known around the world for two things - gambling and hot temperatures. Well, the temperature was not the only hot thing in Vegas the first week in May. BASIS presented TechCon2006 on May 7-9 at the Marriott Renaissance Las Vegas. While playing the slots is always a gamble, the sure bet was that BBj® 6.0 is the most advanced, feature-rich product BASIS has ever released.

The focus for TechCon2006 was the new BBj 6.0 features and functionality. The team of presenters included Nico Spence, Dr. Kevin King, Brian Hipple, Nick Decker, and Jon Bradley. Together, they debuted the latest features and functionality in the BASIS products - custom objects, VKEYED and SQL file types, new 64-bit ports, Mac OS/X support, triggers and stored procedures, FormBuilder and AppBuilder.

While we received great reviews for the technical content of the general sessions, TechCon2006 was more than "all work and no play." BASIS hosted evening events with excellent food and the top-notch entertainment one expects in Las Vegas. On Sunday evening, attendees and their companions experienced a "Vegas Warm-up" with cocktails and a delicious buffet. Brian Campbell and his wife Norann strolled through the crowd sharing amazing magic tricks and demonstrating mind-reading skills, leaving several people scratching their heads and saying "how did they do that!?"

General session at TechCon2006

After a delicious sample of the "Taste of Vegas" on Monday evening, TechCon attendees, exhibitors, and BASIS employees enjoyed the musical impressions of Robbie Howard and his band. The group performed classic hits from a variety of eras and styles from Willie Nelson to Air Supply to Tom Jones and Julio Iglesias. Their humor and music was thoroughly entertaining and the consensus was that the night ended too quickly.

Brian Hipple gives an overview of the BASIS IDE to an interested group of BBx developers during post-TechCon2006 training

Monday evening's entertainment

Following TechCon2006, attendees took the opportunity to sharpen their skills at a variety of one-day training courses held over three days. Many attendees registered for multiple courses to take advantage of the expertise of the instructors and further network with other developers. This post-TechCon training was a great success, filling most classrooms nearly to capacity.

While the saying goes "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas," TechCon2006 attendees left with exciting new technology to share with their customers and several fond memories. If the two months that followed TechCon2006 are any indication of the response, numerous attendees are taking home and beginning to use the hottest BBx® technology yet.
–Laurence Guiney

OSAS Conference is Hot

Gale Robledo Account Manager

n June 8-10, Nico Spence, Dr. Kevin King, and I attended the Open Systems resellers conference held in beautiful downtown Minneapolis. Generally, the weather is very pleasant this time of year but it seemed unseasonably warm. Sure enough, Minneapolis was having a heat wave after a mild winter (mild in Minnesota terms!).

To introduce this year's conference theme "Partners for Profit," Michael Bertini, Open Systems, Inc. (OSI) CEO, shared his ideas on global opportunities, technology changes and challenges, and the importance of partnership. Modeling such a partnership relationship, BASIS and OSI worked closely together to launch OSAS Version 7.0 running BBj®. This joint venture promises to be a profitable venture for OSI. Paul Lundquist, Vice President of Sales, said that 57% of the fulfillments have upgraded to OSAS 7.0.

The OSAS reseller channel is gearing up for the many opportunities to follow this latest release and the thousands of existing users that are waiting to take advantage of it. To meet these many challenges, OSI provided pre-conference training for OSAS 7.0 and BBj. In addition, Nico and Kevin conducted breakout sessions for new BBj language features and DBMS features to educate the channel further. Class attendees were pleased to see where BASIS is heading and excitement filled the room.

BASIS was among 12 other exhibitors to display their technology. It was great to see a room full of exhibitors and experience all the networking that took place among the attendees - talking to old friends and making new contacts.

As always, OSI conducted a well-organized conference with a wealth of breakout sessions, networking opportunities, and fun events. BASIS congratulates OSI on another successful conference and says, “Thank you,” for the opportunity to be part of it. We are committed to our partner Open Systems, Inc., and to the success of OSAS 7.0 and beyond.
–Gale Robledo

European End Users Meet in Germany

Stephan Wald Germany

he weather was warm and sunny for the first European BASIS End User Seminar on June 20-21, 2006 in Germany's famous Black Forest. Karl Knauer KG, a company of over 400 employees and a Business BASIC user for decades (see inset), hosted this event. As host, they had the opportunity to show their own BBj programming successes with their 160 concurrent user system and meet with BASIS staff and other end-user companies.

Over 20 programmers and executives from Germany, France, Switzerland, and Belgium attended this event – the first of its kind for many years – in order to network with other end users and to validate their software development strategic choice of BBj technology. In Knauer, BASIS found a perfect host for this purpose, while surrounded by beautiful and interesting scenery.

The convention was a success for all. BASIS learned more about the needs and requirements of their self programming end user customers, which is sometimes quite different from software development companies. In turn, the attendees gained comprehensive insight into the options that BASIS offers with BBj and how Knauer is taking advantage of these capabilities. For Knauer, they received important feedback and confirmation about their progressive development strategy with BBj.

Given the success of this event, BASIS plans to hold these sessions annually. We invite companies interested in showcasing their application and hosting next year’s seminar to contact us.
–Stephan Wald

Karl Knauer KG, lead by executive manager Joachim Würz and IT manager Peter Treier, is a customer of BASIS Europe Professional Services, the new business unit of BASIS Europe. This new unit offers programming, training, and support to BASIS partners, resellers, and end-user companies with their own IT development staff. Knauer operates three factories in Germany and Poland that produce packaging goods and advertising material for worldwide customers including some fortune 100 companies. BBj is Knauer’s key tool for their data processing –accounting, sales, productions and logistics, with a centralized system connecting all three sites. Currently they are running BBj 5.031 on their 160-user system with plans to upgrade to 6.0 in October 2006. Their application mixes an “old” character-based application with some new, highly integrated graphical programs. All new development supports the full feature set of BBj without losing the code base of the existing, proven solution with its /M/A/I origins.