May 6-9th, 1998
In sunny Orlando, over 700 Synon developers gathered. This is OBspy reporting from Orlando at IUC 98, at what is now officially the largest gathering of Synon customers on the planet, ever!
Months of planning, promoting and coordinating, the pre-conference activities, such as room setup, hotel facilities organization, cabling, wiring and installing of software paved the way for the attendees who participated in the conference.
The days before the conference featured numerous Synon/2 and Obsydian Education sessions as well as 2 extremely successful focus groups. The evening reception held outside in the courtyard of the hotel allowed attendees to mingle with other attendees, Synon staff and even several Disney characters! Mother Nature must have like the food, because the rain stayed away, just for Synon.
Day 1 of the conference kicked off with heart pumping video followed by Ramon Chen (the Master of Ceremonies) hosting a dynamic general session, featuring keynotes from Rich Goldberg, Bill Zeitler of IBM and Tod Nielsen of Microsoft. Attendees were heard in the halls saying that the crisp, entertaining presentations made this one of the best general sessions at IUC ever! Attendees then had a choice of 150 sessions (Over 70 of which were repeated). In fact they had, no less than 10 concurrent sessions to choose from at any one time! Each of the session rooms were spacious and comfortable, more than accommodating the largest number of Synon developers ever to attend.
The vendor expo was the largest Synon has ever put together, with over 30 companies showing their wares. An extremely popular puzzle game (where the attendees had to visit the vendor booths, to collect puzzle pieces and assemble them) led to much debate and cooperation between attendees as they tried to piece together puzzles in order to trade them in for tickets to enter the raffle drawing, which would be held later that night at the Expo reception.
The Expo reception featured the largest number of prizes ever given away, with vendors and Synon contributing, Software, PalmPilots, Windows CE PDA’s, Mini Laptops, Digital Cameras and even Mountain Bikes! The raffle took place in an entertaining, raucous giveaway as Ramon Chen announced the winners with customers and Synon employees cheering and clapping as each drawing was made and winners announced.
The winners, of course, were ecstatic!
For the first time at IUC 98 we featured a Synon Store where buttons proudly stated that you should “Get Cool Gear Here!” The Store featured Synon Denim shirts, caps, bags, mugs and more!
Business at the store at one stage was so brisk that there were lines 3-4 attendees deep as they scrambled to get their Cool Synon Gear!
Day 2 of the conference kicked off in entertaining fashion with a light show and more pounding music and then a keynote by Keith Jaeger followed by Pijugh Singh, the Chairman of the Users advisory board. Just like day 1, the pace of the sessions were complimented by a fully staffed solution center, featuring over 10 Synon products which attendees could preview and receive demos on.
Also the ever popular Obsydian test drive allowed Synon/2 customers to try their hand at the Obsydian Experience. Another popular new addition to the conference was an Invitation only track where Executive level attendees were given the opportunity for close roundtable discussions with Synon, IBM and Microsoft executives. Synon’s relationships with IBM and Microsoft yielded the most number of partner presentations (who were incidentally all industry leading figures) ever!
At the lunch time keynote, Dr. David McCautry of IBM spoke about Network Computing to a engrossed audience.
The Friday Night event was, yes as you might have guessed, the biggest and best ever! A large hall full of arcade games, ranging from motorcycle rides, speed track racing, radio controlled race cars and tracks, pool tables, hangliding virtual reality simulation, Microlite simulators, electronic dart games kept everyone riveted as they competed and enjoyed the end of day festivities. There was also a dance floor which featured a scene with a John Travota and Olivia Newton John lookalikes leading a Grease mega mix dance. Everyone danced and partied hard Friday night!
Day 3 featured yet more excellent presentations as well as Synon/2 and Obsydian Developer Panels which were very well received. Lots of good suggestions came from customers and they communicated their excitement and pleasure with what they had seen in the directions presented by the speakers in the earlier sessions. As ancattendee put it “I am so glad I came to IUC98. Having seen all the Synon presentations, I am confident that Synon is heading in the right direction and in fact leading the way! I couldn’t be happier!”
The closing general session featured a video made overnight, capturing the excitement level of the conference.
There was final thanks for all those involved with IUC 98 and special gifts for Karen Losee and Caroline Van Howe, without which the conference would not have been possible.
How did attendees and staff sum up IUC after the intense excitement and hard work?
“What are you going to do now IUC 98 is over?”
“I’m going to SLEEP (not Disney World)!”