Wave 2023, Day 2, Still a Day Late But Happily the Last Bit of Tardiness This Year

Cameron Lackpour,
October 9, 2023

The End Until Next Year

I know a conference was a good ‘un when it’s over in the blink of an eye. I just blinked.

The Sessions

No Worries with OS Event Handlers

This, this, this is what a great presentation looks like:

Explanation, overview, use cases, demo, code (given in line with the rest of the presentation), and a Q&A component. It is what all technical presentations should use as an exemplar and is indicative of the high quality the rest of the presentations evinced.

Here’s the semi-obligatory code sample:

They are most definitely not afraid to get their geek on. Awesome.

I was super impressed (which is evident from the above) and I’m pretty difficult to impress.

Advanced Solution Engineering Concepts

Practically every member of my family is an engineer save Yr. Obt. Svt.; you will have to decide if it’s for the best that bridges don’t fall down (civil), electrical devices don’t explode (electrical), your coffeemaker doesn’t eat your cat when it transmogrifies into a crazed kill robot (mechanical), and the gasoline/petrol in your car’s tank isn’t made of sugar (chemical) and that I’m the CPM space. Dunno, the last could outweigh of all of the former. Or not. The decision is yours.

Scrambling back to reality, I did wonder a little bit about the appropriateness of the session for me but needn’t have worried. This is seriously geeky stuff but then again, I am – as many have noted – a geeky guy.

Again, look at the content:

Is C# the Future?

I must confess that I am somewhat skeptical of the utility of C# for your average functional consultant who does a moderately good job of playing I-really-am-a-developer. However, VB.Net, while still supported by Microsoft, is largely moribund when it comes to new features and C# is what developers use. Not to worry, you (consultants) will not yet need to learn another language and you (customers) are not facing a wholesale code conversion project to end all code conversion projects as OneStream isn’t dropping VB.Net either. This emphasis on C# by developers is something to think about if you leaven your projects with true developers – either let lose the dogs of C# and see what happens or force them to work in VB.Net. This is a great big, “It depends” kind of decision.

What is most definitely not an “It depends” slide is this however blurry:

For those of you who are too blind to see (and some of you know who you are, yes, you, I’m pointing my finger/ranting like a madman again):

Readable code is: Easier

Easier to understand
- Easier to onboard
  - Easier to deliver value
Easier to maintain
Easier to reuse
Easier to extend

After all:

If attendees understood one thing from this session, from this conference, the above is it.

Remembering the Safe Harbor that who knows if this will happen, who can tell when, who can tell what, and who can why the below may happen…

Note: NextGen IS COMING ONE DAY BUT WHO KNOWS WHEN AND WHO KNOWS IF IT WILL REALLY WORK THIS WAY AND WHO KNOWS WHAT IT WILL BE. You must, must, must understand that this is in a very early stage, cf. it being demoed as a video, not live like all of the other demos at Wave (live demos are bravery realized as so much can go wrong) and it could never happen or happen in a totally different way. You Have Been Warned. Don’t shoot me when none of this happens; rejoice in my perspicacity when (if) it does.

Yup, live debugging in Visual Studio and not in a kludgy way. Again, think of that Safe Harbor and just dream about it as I’m hardly in the position to promise anything on the part of OneStream.

The Awards

OneStream likes to recognize people who have made a difference in the OneStream community. They do it at Splash and Wave as well.

I am chuffed to bits (the language geek in me finds idioms fascinating, this one in particular because it suggests I just went through a wood chipper and can still type) to write that BDA won two awards.

The Fishtank was a competitve product pitch to OneStream contest. Two of BDA’s employees, both slightly crazy, were finalists:

I wasn’t the least bit surprised:

As with other Partner Place firms, BDA won a pioneer award. As a small part of the effort to get just a few of BDA’s products into Partner Place, I know what an achievement this was.