I collected some thoughts and observations from EngageU 2023, the European Claris / FileMaker Developer Conference held Nov 12-14 in Antwerp. Beezwax was proud to be a sponsor. There were plenty of technical discussions, a few described here, and even moreso, plenty of things that should make us all inspired heading toward 2024. If last year’s conference were the “Biggest Claris FileMaker Conference of 2022“, this year’s EngageU was the Most Inspiring, as well as the Biggest of 2023.
“Greetings from Antwerp!” (Let’s pretend the postcard I sent last week has just arrived!)
And..actually, I’m now back home, which for me is slightly sunnier climes, but I’m still reminiscing about EngageU 2023. We all enjoyed the chilled Belgian weather last week. It was perfect for eating frites with sauce, sipping red ale and gathering together with more than 200 of our peers in the Claris FileMaker developer community.
First off it was great seeing some old friends and making some new ones. I put together this collage of sorts…
Claris, an Apple company
Claris, an Apple company, was very well-represented at EngageU, both as a chief sponsor and with several product managers and engineering folks in attendance. Claris is truly a global company, and their participation in privately-organized events underscores their stated commitment to their Partner, customer and developer ecosystem.
I want to give a big Congratulations to Marie Normand at Claris, who recently became their Global Partner Manager. Marie made plenty of time to talk with me, as well as with many other Claris Partners attending EngageU. She shared how she is very excited to take on her new role and challenge. In Partner keynotes and technical presentations from Marie and Douglas Wallis, they both made it clear Claris is focused on growth heading into 2024.
Clay Maeckel, a long-time architect of the Claris FileMaker platform, made the trip to EngageU. Clay is continually surrounded by developers, discussing new ideas and sometimes how to resolve or improve upon existing issues. On the first night where we were at the brewery tour Clay was in a deep technical discussion with several developers. Along came some people to greet Clay: “Hi, we are relatively new to FileMaker and just wanted to say hello and…Thank You”. Clay switched from a deep technical discussion to welcoming them with a smile, a greeting and a wish to get their feedback. Clay was very generous with his time talking with so many developers, and a few customers, and listening to everyone’s ideas.
EngageU Sessions
There were many great talks and the organizers of the conference had three rooms filled with parallel conference sessions. Scattered amongst the session topics were also some vendor sessions, except for when it was time for the Claris Technical Session and the closing session. To find out all of the topics and sessions that were covered, you can find them here.
The majority of the sessions were technical with a few non-technical sessions. All the sessions were recorded and should be made public soon so you can tune in and watch them.
A lot is going on with the Claris Platform. Since Claris has moved to an “Agile” engineering and product management approach, focused on continual improvement and innovation, I feel like the community still has a plenty to chew on with every product release. Even though some releases are not major versions in number, they include some pretty major features. Don't let the version number fool you into believing a new release is not significant.
In the room where AI discussion happens
It is almost impossible to go to a conference these days and not discuss the elephant in the room: AI. With bigger and bigger AI waves that continue to land on our developer beaches, there will only be larger and larger impact in a lot of different domains. The software domain, in Claris / FileMaker development, is one where we are already seeing significant impacts.
Claris mentioned and showed some work in progress on integration with LLMs. As a developer and business community, I would suggest that we can’t wait to learn more how to harness Generative AI and AI in general. Two sessions at EngageU focused on AI: 1) Leveraging Language Models for Automated… by Nicolas Franco Cerame and 2) Let’s chat! by Joris Aarts.
Technical learning, past and future
HOnza from 24U gave a talk titled "24U’s Greatest Mistakes and Recent Successes.” Rather than mistakes, maybe a better way to look at it would be lessons learned. It's a great talk so if you get a chance, I’d recommend watching it.
We love the promise of OData for the FileMaker platform, and John Renfrew has been another Claris developer community leader on this subject. He shared his journey in a talk called "OData and the Data Bridge Model…" He mentioned that he will also be giving this talk at Claris Engage 2024 in Austin. Definitely worth checking out.
Note: We’ll try to update this posts if/when session videos from EngageU are published.
I was inspired to present at EngageU….
"Elements for Building Great Solutions"
I presented again this year at EngageU. Rather than focus on a technical session, I wanted to deliver more of an inspirational session, which I titled "Elements For Building Great Solutions".
Thank you to the number of people came up to me afterwards to say it was a great talk particularly because they were in need of inspiration. If you watch it and have comments about it, I would love to hear from you.
Previewing InspectorPro 8
At Claris EngageU was also the first time we publicly previewed InspectorPro 8. People who attended were thrilled about it and signed up to be notified when a beta version becomes available for testing out. If you have tried or seen InspectorPro 7 it has a brand new foundation and takes a different approach. If you want to sign up for news about the InspectorPro 8 beta, we'll notify you as soon as it is ready.
Community, looking forward to Claris Engage 2024
There was a EngageU Slack channel so attendees could chat and post about various topics, which was great to have. Overall it was wonderful to meet in person and spend a few days together in Antwerp. The venue was excellent, and only felt crowded in the hallways during the breaks. Food was great and there were many excellent restaurants nearby.
I talked with a number of our peers during and after the event and they all really enjoyed the conference. Antwerp is a great location and the facility was fantastic. Perhaps the lighting could have been improved by putting the lights on the presenter, not the screen. Regardless, altogether every year of EngageU is inspiring and I left Antwerp with great optimism. An excellent time was had by many, and it was a great way to wrap up the year and head into what is going to look like a very, very busy 2024 ahead for the Claris / FileMaker Community.
Onwards to Claris Engage in Austin… I hope to see you there, and stop by our booth to find out what is new with InspectorPro 8.