Ten Reasons to Attend Magic Software Users Conference 2015

Ten Reasons to Attend Magic Software Users Conference 2015

1. Immediate return on investment – Attend educational sessions for IT and development professionals that allow you to leverage ideas from other Magic developers and IT pros in your own projects.

2. Maximize what you’ve got - Take home the latest tips and tricks, knowledge and updates from Magic Software R&D, support and global services. No fluff, just hands-on education.

3. Excellent value for the level of intensive education - Learn from others’ experiences, including case studies, developer show-and-tell, hands-on workshops, ask the experts, discussions and networking breaks. We’re emphasizing two-way interactive learning and sharing this year.

4. Leverage others’ experiences - Discover new and cost effective technologies and processes, budget-friendly ways to expand on your existing development and integration knowledge and real-world developer and IT professionals’ experiences that will guide you in your own actions.

5. Efficient access 1:1 Meetings – Meet personally with leaders from Magic Software in R&D, technical support, professional services, executive, sales and marketing functions who are dedicated to providing you with knowledge, demos and personal answers. We have a dedicated one-on-one meeting area. Schedule meetings with any and all Magic staff as needed. Plus many of our experienced independent software vendors will be presenting education sessions.

6. Everyone from your organization can benefit - Return to the office with new knowledge and experiences. Plus attendees will be given conference presentations and sample files to share throughout their organization.

7. It’s a cost cutting conference - With entertainment and meals subsidized by Magic, the benefits out-weigh the cost any day of the week.

8. Customer selected education – IT professionals and business executives just like you have suggested sessions and guided the selection of the most important agenda items. Unlike sterile trade shows, the content of is focused on Magic xpa and Magic xpi. This is an ideal opportunity for prospective customers to get an idea of how Magic xpa Application Platform and Magic xpi Integration Platform are viewed by real customers.

9. Be in the know – By attending general sessions and executive updates you’ll hear the latest news from Magic Software and its effects on the whole community. See the world premier of Magic Software’s new embedded in-memory data grid technology.

10. Build your professional expertise – Participate in the Magic xpa Track or Magic xpi Track to grow professionally and personally. Send at least two participants from your IT team to cover both tracks. Participants in the conference build friendships that last a lifetime and make career connections and business alliances that extend far beyond the intensive three-day format.

Lot's of fun too: Poolside Welcome Reception, Casino DInner and Cruise, MLB Baseball Game, Traditional California Beach Party!

What are you waiting for? Register now!

Sending Your People to the Magic Software Users Conference 2015

There are more reasons than ever to attend the Magic Users Conference 2015. Here are a few suggestions that might help towards making the case to management for your participation. As soon as you get the go-ahead, be sure to register.

• This is one-of-a-kind education experience. With education sessions in dedicated breakout tracks for Application Development, Enterprise Mobility and Enterprise Integration you have access to more Magic education than in any other setting. Be sure to send at least one person from your organization for training in each track: App Development, Mobile Apps and Enterprise Integration.
• You are an asset to your company. All assets require maintenance and enhancements. If instead of being a person, you were a piece of machinery, part of the corporate budget would go towards maintaining and upgrading you. You are an asset to the company. They should be investing the same percentage of budget towards maintaining and upgrading your skills as an IT manager or developer as they do for tangible corporate assets.
• Offer to train others in what you learned when you return. You can pitch your trip to a conference as a way to bring back skills and knowledge to the rest of the organization. If you have any experience in training or teaching, you can use that as your justification to attend instead of other co-workers. Get extra copies of the tutorial notes from other sessions.
• Trip report. Arguably one form of teaching others, the trip report is a write up of the sessions you attended, written for other folks in your group. The best trip reports make it easy for folks to dig up the right reference, or trigger people to come ask you questions. There’s rarely much value in 10 page trip report documents: no one reads them. Instead, a 2 or 3 page summary, with URLs and pointers to stuff for specific questions gets much more mileage.
• Connect the value of the conference to business goals. If ease of use or customer satisfaction are company or division goals, sending folks to conferences on those subjects will help pull in more expertise and knowledge towards helping the business. This argument puts less of the focus on your professional goals, and more on the company.
• Networking. One of the reasons to send people to conferences is to network with other businesses involved with Magic technology. We have an entire area set up for one-to-one meetings with Magic R&D, tech support, professional services, and business representatives. The Magic Software Users Conference networking opportunities are unbeatable; you are attending sessions broken down into specific tracks for the products you use and therefore are surrounded by individuals of great value to your network. Networking can aid in business development, problem solving, recruiting and innumerable other ways.
• Professional development. If you have career discussions with you manager, tie your career goals and future development to specific kinds of training or growth opportunities that you need. This year at the Magic Software Users Conference, we have an entire professional development track of education that ties into your career directly. While this year’s session schedule is established, you can still volunteer to contribute to a session presentation on the agenda. 

Register Now!

Magic Users Conference Agenda

The Magic Users Conference agenda and registration details are now available online at the conference website. You are invited to attend and participate in these sessions. If you see a topic where you would like to co-present or or do a show-and-tell of your solution, there is still time to add instructors. Please contact me at gjohnson@magicsoftware.com to add your expertise.

 Agenda and Education Sessions

Monday June 2, 2014
General Sessions
8:00 - 8:30	Breakfast
9:00 - 9:45	Welcome/Keynote Session – Eyal Karny, CEO Magic Software Enterprises Americas
9:45 - 10:40	Roadmap Session with Yuval Asheri, VP Product Management and Community Relations
10:40 - 10:50	AM Break
10:50 - 11:45	Magic and the CIO Guest Panelists
Noon	Lunch
1:00 - 1:55 PM	Enterprise Mobility: Strategy and Tactics
1:55 - 2:50	Magic and Cloud Computing
2:50 - 3:00	PM Break
3:00 - 3:55	Automated Application and Integration Testing
3:55 - 4:50	Enhancing the Magic Customer Experience
5:00 - 5:45	Magic Town Hall and Roadmap Input
Evening on Your Own
(see Recommended Activities)
Tuesday June 3, 2014	Development Track	Mobility Track	Integration Track
7:00 - 8:00 AM	Breakfast
8:00 - 8:55	SQL Optimization and Migration	Boston Medical Center Case Study	When Should I Upgrade to Magic xpi 4.0 and the In-Memory Data Grid?
8:55 - 9:50	HTML5: Merge Revisited	How-to Build Your First Mobile App without Really Trying	Conversion to Magic xpi 4.x
9:50 - 10:00	AM Break
10:00 - 10:55	Version Control and Team Foundation Server	Is Multichannel the New Cross-Platform Development? -- Glenn Johnson	A Smorgasbord of Retail and B2B eCommerce Integration
10:55 - 11:50	Show and Tell
Noon	Lunch
1:00 - 2:00 PM	IT’s Dilemma: Mobile Device Management
2:00 - 2:55	Converting the World's Worst eDeveloper app to Magic xpa	The Rules of the Game Have Changed: Mobile App UX and UI	Best Practices forCRMIntegration
2:55 - 3:50
3:50 - 4:00	PM Break
4:00 - 4:55	Grange Insurance Case Study (Migration)	Issues and Approaches to Mobile App Deployment	Is it Finally Time for SharePoint Integration?
7:00 p.m - ??	Surf City USA Gala Banquet
Wednesday June 4, 2014	Development Track	Mobility Track	Integration Track
7:00 - 8:00 AM	Breakfast
8:00 - 9:50	Deep Dive: .NET Controls Workshop	Programming for an App that is in Offline Mode	Extend and Enhance Your ERP: A Lesson in Mobility for JD Edwards Users
9:50 - 10:00	AM Break
10:00 - 11:45	Tools you CanUse	How-to Improve Your First Mobile App by Trying A Little Harder	API Workshop: REST, Web Services and More
Noon	Lunch
1:00 - 2:45 PM	Deep Dive: UI Class Design and Usability	Back-End Integration for Mobile Apps	Debugging your Magic xpi Integration Project
2:45 - 3:00	PM Break
3:00 - 3:50	Debugging - Problems and Solutions	Open Standards Workshop	Deep Dive: Advanced Data Mapping Techniques
4:00 PM	Departures

The agenda has been expanded this year to make room for more traditional magic application development training. This has been accomplished by putting mobile development and integration into seperate session rooms. Developers will have their choice between traditional topics (SQL, merge, .NET controls, etc.) and mobile development or integration topics. We're very excited because this allows us to have more trainers, more sessions and more participation than ever  before.  Please register now!