After two long years of pandemics and delays, GDevCon #3 finally took place! With a brilliant new location at the EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam and wonderful presentations, it was impossible not to have fun!
GDevCon is an independent conference open to all graphical developers. It was formed in 2017 by 10 international companies – Hampel Software Engineering being one of them – with the goal of creating an entirely independent LabVIEW conference. Today, it is focused on delivering world-class graphical programming material covering a wide spread of topics relevant to today’s discerning developers. It’s a two-day conference with presentations by LabVIEW peers from around the world. Run by community leaders, it is independent of system vendors and focused on real problems encountered every day by LabVIEW developers
Just when travelling to GDevCon at the end of each summer had become a tradition – GDevCon#1 in 2018 in Cambridge, UK, and then GDevCon#2 in 2019 in Birmingham, UK – the pandemic stopped us short and GDevCon#3, originally planned for 2020 at CERN, had to be first postponed and then cancelled.
GDevCon #3 Location
Amsterdam is surprisingly easy to get to from all over Europe. The Eurostar train whisks you there from the UK, Thalys from the BE(NE)LUX countries and DB from Germany and beyond. Of course, you can always also fly. Amsterdam is widely renowned for its tourist attractions and nightlife. The concentric canals offer a perfect guideline for discovering the beautiful architecture.
The EYE followed up on the beauty of Amsterdam, it offered a nice panorama over the water, which might have proven a distraction, even if it weren’t for the captivating presentations. The seats were comfortable, the screen was gigantic, tech equipment top-notch and the food delicious. What more can one want from a conference venue?
GDevCon #3 itself
Thanks to the high-tech equipment, we were able to avoid the usual technical hiccups that plague seemingly every conference. In addition, Chris, the MC was an amazing host, he managed to keep everyone entertained and focused.
Day 1
On the first day, we learned about connecting LabVIEW with various other services using APIs from Piotr and Matthias. Afterwards, we had the pleasure of learning new open source techniques from John, which we will definitely integrate into our existing stack. Olivier, as usual, was the expert on documentation, using automated tools for documentation speeds up our workflow and eliminates many potential errors. Last but not least, James delivered one of the highlights in our opinion – robust yet simple small solutions for taming the LabVIEW UI for your exact purposes.
NI’s Announcement
After the announcement of LabVIEW Community Edition at GDevCon #2, Eric Reffett again had a surprise to reveal: NI and JKI are partnering up to improve the way VIPM is integrated with LabVIEW. Soon, every LabVIEW user will have access to many features of VIPM that were previously only available with a VIPM Pro license.
Day 2
Day 2 was fun too obviously. Jörg felt good to be back on the stage after 3 long years, especially with a co-presenter as cool as Fab.
James spoke about G-CLI and Docker integration. It’s still a work in progress, but fingers crossed! Anton delivered a very pragmatic showcase of actually good and useful unit tests. Sometimes people tend to forget it’s much more than a simple buzzword. Andrei and Allen introduced us to the exciting, albeit very technical world of interfaces.
Finally, G for Kids by Kabul and Tom was a great way to end the conference. Children are by definition the future. And who would want a future without LabVIEW? Their solution of live labs worked very well, whilst also being entertaining.
Socialising and Fun
It’s always good to meet old friends and make new ones. Especially after the series of lockdowns. We really needed it. There were plenty of long breaks so we could mingle and network. And the evenings always ended with delicious food, nice conversations and wacky cocktails.
As we say at HSE; it’s okay to have fun! And so we did. And just so we can brag a little, our very own Ioan won the Kahoot quiz about women in STEAM. We’re always delighted that “#OurGiantsAreFemale” is an important motto at GDevCon.
GDevCon #4
Number four will take us back to the roots of our conference, to Glasgow. You can find all the details, including the agenda and where to get tickets, on the official website at gdevcon.com.