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OBSpy is a freelance espionage professional. He gives us an inside look at the developments at Synon.
June 1-5, 1998 Tech Ed 98 in New Orleans.
Synon once again sponsored Microsoft Tech Ed and OBSpy was there to check it out!
See the photos of this exciting event!Synon's technical theme for the show was "shoot the gap" meaning, don’t wait, develop today and regenerate to take advantage of future technologies. This message was targeted towards the huge population of developers waiting for the upcoming NT 5 and SQL Server 7 releases. Synon's business theme was "real companies are building real enterprise NT applications with Obsydian". This was exemplified by Synon's two ISV partners demonstrating their applications and the power of Obsydian. PMSC brought their huge 400 entity Point + insurance application and Cantoc came with their hot new Censys warehousing product.
Mike Ehling retired Chef Michel and starred in the new Michael Ehling/Ramon Chen production of "Leonardo da Vinci does Obsydian" in full 15th
century regalia. It was extremely entertaining to all as Leonardo explained the benefits of Obsydian in renaissance metaphor… I mean how would you like to build a dome on every church in Italy without a dome pattern!T-Shirts-T-Shirts-T-Shirts!! Synon gave raffle tickets for a leather jacket to everyone found in the halls of Tech Ed wearing a cool new blue and white architecting success Synon T-shirt (around three thousand!). The halls were filled with walking Synon billboards!
Synon also had a hospitality suite run by Lisa Pascetta next door at the Hilton was very well attended by folks demanding to take a closer look. One person stayed in the suite for 3 ½ hours, rumor has it he is rolling his applications out worldwide next week… Synon had a video wall at the booth with a hip-hop Synon & Microsoft video, and also had a powerful, one minute, customer case study video starring Stewart Enterprises, that played in front of the general session audience of over 9500 people! Stewart is the 3rd largest funeral provider in North America and the crowd cheered when the video proclaimed "Stewart puts UNIX to rest". Microsoft liked it so much, they started playing it in place of their video in the middle of Steve Ballmer’s keynote presentation!! (Apparantly it was an accident when they played it again in the middle of Ballmer’s talk, but hey these things happen!) Last year Synon had such an impact sponsoring a party with Digital and Microsoft they did it again. With the reputation Synon earned last year, the demand was high at the booth for VIP passes to The House of Blues Bash on Wednesday night. It is safe to say Synon had a major impact as the crowd was lead by the Synon team chanting SYNON-SYNON-SYNON as Ramon Chen, Andrew Lev, Steve Yung and Lynda Reynoso threw t-shirts into a frenzied crowd and raffled Synon leather jackets. Synon was also involved in a private BackOffice party on the other side of the French Quarter for press, analysts and key ISVs to announce the new BackOffice logo requirements. Microsoft introduced Synon and Obsydian as the premier enterprise NT tool for BackOffice development.It's safe to say that Synon was everywhere at Tech Ed 98 in New Orleans. Everyone who saw Synon's technologies were extremely impressed. The World is taking notice as Synon continues to forge ahead as the ultimate tool for developing NT applications.
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)!”
Check out the images of IUC 98!
August 28th, 1997
Possibly The Largest Java Application in Production Today!
During a recent Beta preview of the Obsydian for JAVA generator an application created by
a software vendor, Chorus
Software in the U.K, which had been previously deployed from Obsydian to both the
Windows client AS/400 and Windows NT/BackOffice was regenerated using the Obsydian for
JAVA generator. OBSpy was there and took notes on the stunning results:
July 29th, 1997
Microsoft Global Summit MGS, Orlando Florida
At Microsoft's internal marketing and sales conference with over 5000 Microsoft employees from all over the World attending, Synon again attracted massive interest. All the exhibitors were prevented from handing out t-shirts directly at the show but that didn't stop Synon from collecting business cards/names and addresses from attendees with the promise of sending them a t-shirt by mail! To date Synon has fulfilled their end of the bargain with over 1000 GOT OBSYDIAN t-shirts sent out as well as over 50 Synon Microsoft Denim shirts. No doubt the hallways of Microsoft campuses all over the World are filling up with Microsoft employees sporting Synon clothing.
As if that wasn't enough, Synon co-sponsored with Digital and SAP the party of the conference at the Epcot center in Disney World. Part of Epcot was closed off for the 1500 Microsoft employees that were invited. Food, wine and a spectacular fireworks and lightshow capped off one of the most memorable nights at MGS.
July 22nd, 1997
Tech Ed 97, Yokohama, Japan as reported by OBSpy's representative in Japan
Like a typhoon, Synon whirled through Tech Ed Japan here in Yokohama. No other vendor exhibited such presence and attracted such large crowds. Comments were heard like:
"I'm impressed! I never thought there is a tool like this! It's beyond my imagination!!!" <translated from Japanese>
Obsydian T-shirts were being worn immediately by
Japanese attendees, very atypical in events such as these.
Synon's name was on everyones lips and Obsydian was being hailed as the savior for large
scale Enterprise development fully supporting DBCS and Japanese.
July 2nd, 1997
Cote d'Azur in the South of France. Tech.Ed 97
Nice was teeming with over 3700 eager attendees for
Microsoft's largest European conference - sponsored by Synon.
Synon's Master Chef was spotted at Tech Ed in Nice, France. A long awaited Bill Gates live
satellite link up was preceded by video footage of the conference -- including the Synon
Chef in full flow in front of mass audiences.
At least 4 people were seen stripping in an effort to receive Synon new "STOP Coding - Start Architecting" T-Shirts and extra raffle tickets for prizes.
May 9th, 1997
In case you didn't hear, Synon co-sponsored Microsoft's Tech Ed 97 in
Orlando May 59, 1997. With over 8,000 attendees, Synon caused quite a stir with the now
famous "Cooking Demo"(A Ramon Chen/Wasim Ahmad production). Synon also gave away
1000 battery powered fans, 500 brownies and 2000 t-shirts on which were simply printed
======>
- Synon also sponsored 1,000 mouse pads with the same graphic =============> for every workstation at the conference.
- In fact, Synon were everywhere, also co-hosting the Windows NT Champfest, "Racing with Windows NT", an evening reception at the Race Rock cafe in Orlando.
- Meanwhile back at the conference, on stage Synon's VP of Development, Keith Jaeger participated in a Tech Ed keynote with Pat Helland (Architect of Viper, Microsoft's Transaction Server). The video of "Deploying and managing applications on Microsoft Transaction Server". The full 1hr 6min video (you will need to load Microsoft Netshow to view it) in which Keith Jaeger appears about 3/4 of the way through is available at : http://www.audionet.com/video/netshow/teched/demand_schedule.htm
April 29th, 1997
Did you make it to the Synon International Users Conference in San Diego? If not, check out the cool presentations and the first meeting of Club Lava members in an extremely interactive and productive session called Club Lava - Let's chat about Obsydian UI Futures, you can download the zipped presentation and meeting notes.
January, 1997
10,000 Attendees at Lotusphere got a sneak peek of
how Obsydian can help them harness the power of Lotus Domino. There are screencam demo's
of Obsydian generated domino applications in a directory called OOJump on the Obsydian
2.51 CD!
December 6th, 1996
Who
are these guys? And why do they look so captivated? OBSpy managed to obtain for us the
negatives of the 1996
Synon International Users Conference which was held in Orlando last May.
Where you there? If so you may spot yourself in among the crowd. If not you missed out and
you may want to make sure you make it to Synon '97 
November 1st, 1996
Synon
recently won 2 Midrange Systems Buyers
Choice awards. These awards are voted upon by Midrange Systems Magazine subscribers and
Synon won for Obsydian - Best Client A/D tool and for Synon/2 - Best CASE Tool. Synon
has repeatedly been a winner of Midrange Systems Buyers Choice awards in the past with
Synon/2. The awards were presented at a banquet held in Atlanta. Ramon Chen, Obsydian
Product Manager accepted the award on behalf of Synon. Pictured here are several members
of the winning marketing, development and sales teams.
October 25th, 1996
Synon were at it again at the Fall 1996 COMMON Conference in Atlanta featuring their award winning booth at the
Expo. Each cooking class given by the now famous Chef Michael was jam packed. In fact
rumor had it that a notable scalper (in Atlanta to profit on the World Series) was
seen selling tickets to seats at the Synon Booth! In addition to the expo, there were over
30 presentations given by Synon employees at the conference as well as the ever popular
Obsydian lab. In fact, two "Progress Software" employees were so impressed by
what they saw of Obsydian at the Expo that they decided to attend the lab. In the true
spirit of COMMON they were invited to participate in the lab. Once again illustrating
that in the realm of Technology for Enterprise Development there are those who lead (Synon
with Obsydian), those who follow (Synon's customers) and those who have already gotten out
of the way.
October 13th, 1996
The
European Synon Users Conference was held Oct 10th, 11th in Paris at the Euro Disneyland
Resort. Over 300 attended this extremely popular and successful conference. Keynotes by
Simon Williams, Rich Goldberg and prominent IBM and Microsoft executives highlighted
the event. Check out some
pictures of the conference!
September 25th, 1996
Synon becomes a Lotus Business Partner as the IBM Synon Object Technology Lab
gears up to work on an Obsydian class library for Lotus
Notes.
August 15th, 1996
Senior Synon
executives met with Bill Gates at Microsoft
headquarters' in Redmond, WA. Richard Goldberg, CEO and President and Keith Jaeger,
Vice-President of Research and Development were attending the Windows ISV Advisory Board
meeting. The Windows ISV Enterprise Advisory Board is dedicated to helping expand the
enterprise software market benefiting both Microsoft and its technology consumers by
advising Microsoft on its products, positioning, and marketing strategies. Rich and Keith
had a unique opportunity to discuss Microsoft BackOffice strategy with Gates himself.
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