Another year, another incredible GDevCon! This time, GDevCon#4 was in Glasgow, right in the middle of the Silicon Glen. The perfect location for meeting old and new #labviewfriends, both far and near.
Background
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.
Glasgow
Last year we travelled to Amsterdam, this year we travelled NW again, to Scotland – right near Ioan’s home. Glasgow is a city of the living, definitely worth a visit if you haven’t been there yet:
Arriving a day earlier than the conference’s start gave #teamhampelsoft a chance for rest and recreation, including a bouldering session together with Olivier from Wovalab.
The Venue of GDevCon#4
The beauty of GDevCon’s venues has been constant, and this year was no exception! The Glasgow Science Centre, located on the bank of the River Clyde is a marvel of contemporary architectural design.
Inside was a repurposed IMAX cinema, complete with a gigantic presentation screen. This was the perfect solution for viewing those high-res VI glyphs, as featured in the presentation of Jesper Sorenson.
Glasgow is a foodie’s paradise. On the first day of GDevCon, all 200 of the participants managed to fit in the Dockyard Social, a large hall with many food trucks, for a large dinner get-together.
The participants of GDevCon were highly varied, both new #labviewfriends and old, from beginner developers to Champions, small firms to multinational giants.
In total 180 delegates attended, from 23 countries and 76 companies. 51% of them were first-time GDevConners. We are happy to see that the gender and age spectrum is also heavily expanding.
The Presentations of GDevCon#4
The presentations were a nice mix of technical to entertaining, and the breaks in between gave ample space for socialising.
Manu’s personal highlight presentation was Olivier’s on Docs as Code. Automating and deeply integrating documentation generation into the development process is the best way to ensure proper documentation standards.
Richard Thomas’ presentation on Industrial Communication was a great insight into which areas LabVIEW excels at, and where there is still some room to improve.
Matthias Baudot showcased how LabVIEW is able to be used even for ERP systems. His presentation was highly entertaining and helped us gain a broader perspective of the LabVIEW ecosystem.
The tempo of the speeches was great, one never felt bored or rushed.
This time around, #teamhampelsoft didn’t present, we came simply to kick back and absorb the information. However, we’re very much thankful for the many shoutouts we received! Pete Horn, from NI, talked about CI and praised our Release Automation Tools. Kabul Maharjan, from Renishaw, praised our open-source software stack, specifically the HSE Application Template which they also use at Renishaw.
The hardware companies even had the opportunity to demonstrate their products in real life, inside the Tech Cave. Fascinating among these were the stalls of Gantner Instruments, Beckhoff and Pickering.
The GDevCon World Tour
The success and popularity of GDevCon spawned two spin-offs (so far)! GDevCon N.A. in North America, and GDevCon ANZ in the Asia-Pacific region. HSE managed to attend 2/3 this year, we’re hoping for a full world tour next year!
The Future
See you next year! Planning has started already for next year, with many new ideas for all sorts of different formats. Who knows where the current success will grow? And as for the location, if our secret insider sources are correct, we won’t have to travel very far! 😉
Finally, we would like to once again thank all the organisers for their incredible work!