[Commentary] Impressions from the Servoy 4 Preview Tour

[image unavailable: Picture_61]Troy and I attended the New York City event last friday (June 20). To get there, we decided to take in a cultural travel experience and booked our transport with the China Town bus.

On the plus side: round trip fare from Washington DC to NYC, $35 per person.

On the minus side: round trip fare from Washington DC to NYC, $35 per person.

Traveling tip: make sure to get the one pair of seats with visible leg room. That would be at the very opposite end from the back of the bus.

The only cool part about leaving DC at 3:30am in the morning is that you arrive to China Town in NYC bright and early at 8am. The shops are opening, the kids are walking to school, and pockets of Tai Chi are everywhere. All overlaid with a nice fish smell. If you've had your head buried in Servoy work for the past year then it is quite a refreshing change of pace. Especially on such a beautiful day.

From China Town, we started walking uptown towards the Support Group's NYC offices. Except that we went the wrong way on Broadway and ended up in front of Trinity Church before we realized our mistake. Keep in mind that you don't hire us for NYC directions!

A quick cab ride later and we were hanging out with a roomful of Servoy and wanna-be Servoy developers. Jan Aleman and Yvo Boom from Servoy, Rich Columbre and Darren Clarke from Support Group, and Matt Frizzell and Jon Safford from adBlocks were some of the heavy hitters.

The event itself was pretty much what you would expect from a roomful of Servoy fans with Jan Aleman, the president of Servoy showing off the latest-most-revolutionary release of Servoy ever (*yawn*). In other words...we all couldn't wait to get done with the event and on to the important business of drinking beer at the Irish Pub conveniently located right below the offices of the Support Group.

I guess I should back up and say that I did come away very impressed with what Servoy 4 is bringing to the table. Servoy + Eclipse is a developer's dream. Those Servoy guys are pretty smart.

And if you go to one of these events yourself, you will be introduced to a brilliant real world comparison between Servoy and some random Microsoft technology that way too many developers in the world use (except for Microsoft of course). This comparison is still ongoing and not publicly released yet -- once it is, I have a feeling there will be a small bit of a ruckus in the development tool community. Let's just say that if you're a developer or an ISV, Servoy makes for quite a compelling case.

Back to the Irish Pub...two quick beers on an empty stomach and a lot of laughs later I was stumbling out the door to catch my ride back to DC. Hope everyone else has fun at these tour dates in the coming weeks -- well worth the transportation effort in my opinion.

Next up: Servoy World 2008 in Vegas come September. Looking forward to catching up with everyone there.

Cheers,

David Workman