bpmNEXT ? mojo in Monterey

Tuesday, March 26, 2013 by Neil Ward-Dutton

Most conferences I go to are not conferences in the classic sense; they?re really industry sales and marketing events with little conference-y bits around the edges. This is not to knock the industry sales/marketing events; everyone knows why they?re going (the vendors, to collect leads and cement relationships; the customers/prospects, to learn and make connections).

But Bruce Silver (@bpmswatch) and Nathaniel Palmer?s (@nathanielpalmer) bpmNEXT, which took place for the first time last week just outside Monterey, CA, is that it is quite close in format and intent to a conference in the classic sense. There was no explicit marketing of the event to technology purchasing prospects (though a couple did turn up); there was no goal of generating leads and so on. This was a meeting of BPM technology vendors and implementers who were looking to discuss developments, learn from each other, and so on….

Speakers showcased everything from modelling innovations (novel ways to discern the quality of models) to novel discovery and analysis tools, user interaction prototypes, developments in process analytics and real-time optimisation, adaptive case management ? not forgetting a sprinking of mobile and social goodness too. There was real energy in the room and in side conversations ? real passion and a desire to give and receive feedback….

The feedback I got from other conference attendees was that bpmNEXT was as worthwhile an event for them as it was for me. If you?re a vendor in the BPM technology space, I?d advise you to book early for 2014. I?ll be there, for sure.

bpmNEXT Wrapup: The Good, The Bad And The Best In Show

March 21, 2013 by Sandy Kemsley

The first bpmNEXT conference has finished, and it was a great experience for me…. First and foremost, this was primarily a meeting of peers to discuss BPM innovation in an open fashion. It was not targeted at customers, so there was little of the peacock-like preening and posturing that you get when vendors parade in front of them. It was also not attended by the major analyst firms, so ditto….

The atmosphere was collegial and friendly, even (for the most part) between competitors, and I had the feeling that many of the presenters just wanted to show off their cool new stuff because they knew that this was the audience that would most appreciate it. I really think that Bruce and Nathaniel achieved their goal of making this ?like DEMO for BPM?. For the vendors that didn?t attend, or who attended but didn?t participate because they didn?t want to show all their cool new stuff to their competitors: you are totally missing the point, and you missed a great opportunity….

Second, cool and awesome demos! The ?Best in Show? awards that we all voted on at the end (to Fluxicon, Whitestein and Fujitsu) were well-deserved, although many others were equally deserving. I loved the bleeding edge demos ? Gero Decker of Signavio accidentally showed us how to do process modeling with head gestures ? and the skunkworks projects that may never see the light of day but represent some different thinking ? Keith Swenson of Fujitsu with his Cognoscenti demo really brought advanced case management to life. Anne Rozinat and Christian Gunther were in the first demo slot, which could have been tough, but they set the bar extremely high (they won first prize, after all) and wowed a lot of the North Americans there who had never had the chance to see their Disco process mining product… If I can give a word of advice to those vendors who have given me briefings in the past, treat this like that: no slides, no bullshit, no distractions.

Trends in BPMS

March 26, 2013 by Paul Harmon, BPTrends Email Advisor

Unlike other business process conferences that to try to cover a whole range of business process topics, this conference
was focused on BPM software technologies?and even more specifically, on the new technologies that will help define the next generation of BPMS products. You could think of the conference as a long series of vendor presentations, with this difference: the presenters were the chief technical officers of the companies they represented. In several cases, the discussions among technical experts that followed the talks were as valuable as the talks themselves…

In the course of two days 80 attendees listened to 25 speakers, each describing research or a specific product that offered an idea about where the BPMS market might be going. In an effort to understand what I was hearing, I kept revising a Venn diagram that I picture as Figure 2. I tried to reflect the broadest trends in the largest circles and then tried to include specific topics within smaller circles.