This week BEA launched the Participate 2008 blog and revealed more about their plans for what is shaping up to be a great event. Perhaps the most exciting news is that BEA will be using the conference to unveil a suite of social applications running on a soon-to-be-released version of ALI 6.5 and coded by the developers here at bdg.
Jay Simons writes, in this first post on the Participate blog:
Mobile, social experiment: conference attendees will be provided an iPod Touch (more on this later), and we're unveiling a suite of applications (built on the soon-to-be-released version of AquaLogic Interaction by partner BDG) that attendees will be able to interact with through the Touch. The applications will be inherently social, allowing you to engage one another directly at the event, in sessions, in hallways, you name it. Social networking, on a mobile device, powered by AquaLogic User Interaction. That's hot!
Hot is an understatement. Imagine the possibilities. . . .
Instead of raising your hand to ask a question, use your WiFi-enabled iPod Touch to post the question on the session's wall while the session is in progress. Then, at the end of the session, the presenter can pull up the session's wall on the projector and field the questions. Like the presenter? Ask him or her to be your contact or join one of your groups! Meet an influential C-level executive who's an expert in SOA governance and want to get to know him better? You can poke him or leave a message on his wall.
Leave your business cards at home -- instead use these great bdg-built/ALI-powered applications!
They'll be much more info to come on this "social experiment," so watch this space in the upcoming weeks and months. To give you a little taste, think Facebook tuned for the enterprise with the specific goal of conference social networking in mind. Rich user profiles; mini- and aggregate feeds; user, session and group walls; private messaging/poking; tagging and other popular Facebook-like functionality will all be included.
This is revolutionary, game-changing stuff. And this is why we're excited about Participate 2008. We hope you are too.
Comments
Comments are listed in date ascending order (oldest first)
- Sounds like you could start a spinoff company just on this product! I bet it would be a fun (and useful) tool at ANY type of conference! Where can I find out more information about the "social applications running on a soon-to-be-released version of ALI 6.5". Any sneak peeks? Are these built upon the Pages/Ensemble/Pathways components or are they new standalone features? Will they be included with upgrades or have any additional cost? Any release date projected? Keep up the good work Chris - you guys inspire us all to want to do more!
Posted by: geoffgarcia on January 17, 2008 at 1:29 PM
- Hi again Geoff! Thanks for your kind words. After a hard day of slaving away at code that doesn't work (yet) and then two hours of driving through ice and slush, there's nothing like coming home from work and finding nice comments on my blog. :-)
As for your questions, I don't want to speak out of turn because BEA at this point is probably limited in what they can (and want) to say about ALUI 6.5. But I will answer them as much as I can in a follow-up post, after I seek BEA's approval.
So, long story short, watch this space and there will be much more, including, at some point, screenshots. Of course, if you want to see the The Full Monty, you'll need to register for the conference.
Posted by: bucchere on January 17, 2008 at 6:53 PM