October 2010 Archives

Like all good things, Justin James' Developer Diary series has finally come to an end - a happy one at that!  Justin successfully used the Agile Platform to bring his Rat Catcher application from idea to fully-fledged application.  During the last few months he learned the platform, overcame the challenges of scarce resources, infrastructure, etc to deliver his application.

In his final entry, Justin explains how he used the Agile Platform to retrofit some aspects of his application, specifically moving his layout from tables to CSS.  He also gives us his thoughts around the new Agile Platform 5.1 as well as the lessons he learned using our platform.

I encourage you to check it out, along with the rest of the series below:

Have you used the Agile Platform? How do you relate to Justin's experience? 

It's October, which means it's time for another IDC Directions in Portugal. Keeping last years' tradition, OutSystems sponsored this event and sent a team of ambassadors to talk to some of the key players in the Portuguese IT industry.

Although the current economic downturn was part of the agenda, the feeling around the event was extremely positive. The opening keynote by Cort Isernhagen did a great job of putting the minds of everyone on  the need to make IT not only more efficient, but also more effective!

This was very much in line with what our own Mike Jones had prepared for his keynote.  His presentation was focused on "The IT Efficiency Imperative", and highlighted the fact that tough economic times tend to present innovative companies with the opportunities to react to new market conditions and chase that 'illusive' new pot of gold.

In his presentation he set out four key concepts that ITs need to take into consideration to be not only efficient, but also effective in helping the business innovate.  The presentation was based on Geoffrey Moore's core/context model, and to help people visualize the concept, we printed it out on some paper napkins!  These were a huge success with everyone that visited the OutSystems stand as they listened to our presentations, drank coffee and ate OutSystems donuts!

Aside from the napkins, there was a lot more activity on our stand. On day one, we handed two Agility Awards to DGAL for a couple of projects: Portal Autárquico, and the SIIAL and SIGE projects. On the second day, it was Hovione's turn to receive an Agility Award for their Global Performance System project, implemented by Noesis. We also had a demo of IberoMail's solution on our booth, performed by Normatica. Thank you all for coming and congratulations on the projects and awards!

What about you? What were your favorite parts of IDC Directions? If you didn't get to go, here's a small video with a few of the event's highlights: