Bouvet and Italy 2013 BizTalk Innovation Day events – The Story

And finally, the BizTalkCrew 2013 tour is over! Like last year, this was a European tour that started in London (UK) with our BizTalk Summit 2013, with an astounding audience of 128 attendees from more than 70 different companies across 16 countries. Then, for the first time, we held the event in the beautiful city of Oporto (Portugal) – Oporto BizTalk Innovation Day, a very special event for me because I was the host of the event, and this was the first time I was able to bring the BizTalk product group to Portugal.

And in the last two months, the BizTalkCrew has been very active and busy planning and organizing the end of the 2013 European tour with two new BizTalk Innovation Days.

Bouvet BizTalk Innovation Day 2013

The first event, Bouvet BizTalk Innovation Day 2013, was a two-day event (26 and 27 of September) held for the second time in Stavanger (Norway) and besides having the usual suspects (the BizTalkCrew: me, Steef-Jan Wiggers, Nino Crudele, Saravana Kumar and Tord G. Nordahl) as speakers, the event had two distinguished special guests: Microsoft Integration MVP Kent Weare and Microsoft Windows Azure Customer Advisory the infamous Paolo Salvatori.

This was the biggest BizTalk event organized in Norway this year, with a total of 70 people attending this two-day event.

The first day was filled with presentations made by the speakers:

• The first session was MVP Kent Weare talking about how you can expose Line of Business (LOB) services to mobile devices using BizTalk 2013 and the Azure Service Bus.
• The second was MVP Steef-Jan Wiggers talking about how you can learn to leverage BizTalk Server 2013 and Windows Azure Service Bus to create hybrid solutions.
• And in the last session of the morning, Paolo Salvatori took the stage to give the keynote about BizTalk 2013.
• MVP Saravana Kumar took the stage in the first session of the afternoon to talk about Management and Monitoring of BizTalk Server using BizTalk360 and to raise the curtain for the first time in public and show some screens of the new version of the product in HTML5.
• The fifth session was conducted by me, talking about BizTalk Mapping Patterns and Best Practices. Because this was a two day event I thought I’d take advantage of the first day just to make a theoretical presentation without demos, trying not only to explain how maps are processed internally by the engine of the product and describe some common mapper problems and solutions, but also try to recall some of the main basic concepts of maps because, most times, over the years and the experience acquired even the most experienced developer begins to carry malpractice and forget to apply the most basic concepts.
• MVP Tord Nordahl took the stage after my session to talk about Proactivity in BizTalk by addressing some of the most important aspects to be aware of in order for the enterprise to maintain a stable BizTalk environment.
• And the final session was made by MVP Nino Crudele about BizTalk Hostage Situation – a set of good hostage BizTalk scenarios and how you can gain control of the situation and solve problems of bad implementations.

This day ended with an awesome dinner with the attendees and the Bouvet staff, but only after a few hours of a break with some beers and a good talk with the attendees.

And like last year, the second day was hands-on labs, each speaker had their own room and hourly time slots, where the attendees could come in and had the opportunity to meet, discuss their issues, ask questions, or share their experience with the speakers. I took this day to show 11 common mapping problems and explain the best way to address them, and of course, some of the best practices while we are developing maps. It was an amazing day with a great conversation between the attendees and good feedback.

After the event had ended, unfortunately, Saravana and Paolo Salvatori had to go back home, and Steef-Jan and Kent Weare went to Berlin to run the 40th Berlin Marathon (crazy guys!), but the rest of the team, accompanied by Salvatore Pellitteri, enjoyed themselves a little, visiting and getting to know Norway.

You can download my presentation here.

BizTalk Innovation Day 2013 Italy

The second event, BizTalk Innovation Day 2013 Italy, was held in the Microsoft Innovation Campus in Milan (Italy). This was also the second time that the event was held in Italy, which also had the participation of two special guests: Microsoft Windows Azure Customer Advisory Paolo Salvatori and community member Salvatore Pellitteri.

The agenda was very similar to the Norway event:

• Once again Steef-Jan had the privilege to start the event with his presentation about hybrid solutions.

• And was followed by Paolo Salvatori with an extension of the first session. This time, Paolo talked about how you can use Windows Azure Service Bus, BizTalk Services, Mobile Services, and BizTalk Server to create hybrid solutions.

• The third session, and to end the morning, was Saravana Kumar with his presentation about Management and Monitoring of BizTalk Server using BizTalk360. But for the first time in public, all of the demos were made in the last version of the product (V7).

• It was up to me to start the afternoon with my session about BizTalk Mapping Patterns and Best Practices. I reduced the slides to contain only the essential and most important information in order to be able to make a practice session. And I got it! Having enough time to show my 11 demos!

• After my session, Tord took the stage to present his session about Proactivity in BizTalk.

• And the responsibility to end the event with the final session was on the shoulders of Nino Crudele and Salvatore Pellitteri, who held a presentation about real BizTalk environments in which they addressed several topics, like the new licensing system in BizTalk Server 2013 and productivity.

After the event had ended, the team enjoyed a little by visiting, getting to know Italy, and eating amazing food.

You can download my presentation here.

The speakers

For Norway, the event is the usual group photo, starting from left to right with Kent Weare, Tord Nordahl, Steef-Jan Wiggers, Saravana Kumar, Nino Crudele, Sandro Pereira (me), and Paolo Salvatori.

And the same group picture in Italy with Nino Crudele, Salvatore Pellitteri, Sandro Pereira (me), Tord Nordahl, Steef-Jan Wiggers, and Saravana Kumar.

2014?

What about 2014? Yes, we are already planning the 2014 BizTalk Innovation Tour!

Is it this year that we make an event in Europe? For now, we are planning some events in Europe that will be announced soon… but it only depends on you 🙂

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