EKON23: brief report and some pictures
I’ve been speaking at EKON23 in Düsseldorf, this week. It is one of the most attended and most interesting conference about Delphi, at world level. It has been a pleasure to meet a nice number (>100) of developers and my sessions had a good feedback so I am happy about how it went.
My sessions
IoT, Delphi, BLE
The first session was about IoT, using ESP32 SoC, featuring WiFi and Bluetooth LE on board and a dual core 240 MHz CPU. I brought a couple of breadboards implementing temperature and humidity sensor plus a buzzer as alarm when temperature reaches a configurable threshold. Data from sensor could be read through BLE and the device can be configured via BLE. Optionally, it can also post JSON data over http. The remaining part of the session has been about using M5Stack devices (same ESP32 core but with nice built-in features like buttons, LCD, IMU, battery, …). I’ve also shown some Delphi code to interface BLE devices to read/write characteristics and subscribe to notifications from device.
FMX: TFrame/TFormStand and FMXER
The second session was about TFrameStand and its twin, TFormStand. After a general introduction about these two components I built (GitHub repository: https://github.com/andrea-magni/TFrameStand ), I’ve introduced a new visual framework I am building using them: FMXER (GitHub repository: https://github.com/andrea-magni/FMXER).
It is still at a very prototypal level and will have heavy improvements in the next weeks but I have positive feelings about it. The general idea is to provide developers with visual macro-components that will increase their productivity (keep them focused on core functionalities) and at the same time help achieving visual consistency throughout the application.
More will come about FMXER on this blog and conferences ahead.
The conference
The line up of speakers was impressive, as usual: 23 speakers from different countries, featuring some of the best ones in the world, including Marco Cantù, Delphi Product Manager at Embarcadero.
Among the 23 speakers you could see (random order): Cary Jensen, Ray Konopka, Jens Fudge, Bruno Fierens, Brian Long, Daniele Spinetti, Bogdan Polak, Bernd Ua, Stefan Glienke, Arnaud Bouchez, Roald van Doorn, Rüdiger Kügler, Christoph Schneider, Serge Pilko, Max Kleiner and Matthias Eißing.
This has been my fourth edition as a speaker (2016-2019) and I’ve attended 2014 edition also. The organization has been perfect as always and I am starting feeling home at EKON as I know more and more people involved and attending. I always appreciate talking to other developers including the many experts present, whether they are giving sessions or not, and the new faces that pops out from year to year.
Some pictures
Community
Aside of the conference itself, it is a great way to meet friends from all over the world and have a chance to enjoy some time together, sharing work but also life experiences.
Hope to see you all again next year! BTW, 2020 dates have already been published: November 2nd-4th in Düsseldorf.
Meanwhile, next international appointment I am involved is the Be-Delphi event in Belgium (Brussels), November 21st, 2019.
Andrea