Meet the Smalltalk Experts at ESUG 2012

We’re happy to report that several of the conference speakers are Cincomers,  Cincom clients or Cincom partners, including the following:

Monday, August 27

Maikel Vandorpe and Elke Matthijs, MediaGeniX – Continuous Integration – a Practical Approach

Abstract:
Continuous integration is the practice where members of a development team integrate their work frequently. Usually each of them integrates at least daily, which leads to multiple integrations per day. To detect errors, each integration is verified by an automated build and test. This approach is generally found to lead to a significant reduction of integration problems, which in turn allows teams to develop cohesive software even in a limited time frame. In theory, tests should arrive within 15 minutes. However, in reality we find that this is not often the case. At MediaGenix NG there are 30 developers working on the same product, each of them building several new versions per day. For these new versions some 30.000 tests need to be run to check for errors. This makes it clear that theory and practice differ greatly. This presentation offers insights on a practical approach to continuous integration by means of continuous testing where you cannot expect results within 15 minutes but where you sometimes want a result as soon as possible.

Bios:
Maikel Vandorpe has been developing in VisualWorks since 2004 at MediaGeniX. Besides working on large and smaller projects for customers, he helped building and improving the current development environment within the company. He also had the pleasure to introduce a dozen new developers in the wondrous world of Smalltalk.  Elke Matthijs was first introduced to Smalltalk almost two years ago, when she started working for MediaGenix NG right after graduating as an industrial engineer. In this short period of time, she’s had the opportunity to participate in customer projects, i.e. to customize MediaGeniX’s core product Whats’On, as well as to add functionality to VisualWorks, the company’s development environment.

Denis Defreyne, MediaGeniX– Extending a Base Product for Multiple Customers

Abstract:
MediaGeniX NG develops a single product called WHATS’On, but this software program’s base version is never used as-is by customers. Customizations are developed for each customer. These customizations are either changes to the base behavior or additional functionality that is added so as to fit the customer’s workflow. With over thirty customers, managing these customizations proves to be a challenge. How can these different versions of the same base product be managed in a sustainable way, while allowing the base product to evolve with a minimum of complications? MediaGeniX has developed techniques and software in a future-oriented way to achieve this goal. These techniques have been developed for VisualWorks, but are applicable to other Smalltalk implementations as well. This presentation focuses on these different techniques, how they are maintained and in what ways they can be applied to other products.

Bio:
Denis Defreyne started working as a software developer at MediaGeniX two years ago, after finishing his computer science studies at Ghent University.

Tuesday, August 28

Karsten Kusche, Heeg – Practically Using Glorp

Abstract:
At Heeg we’ve used Glorp in several different projects with quite different requirements and approaches. That includes the migration of existing ObjectStudio or VisualWorks Projects to Glorp as well as the migration of an abstract Lens-Based OR-Mapping Framework. But also new projects use Glorp to connect VisualWorks to a database. Each Project had its own set of problems and solutions.

Bio:
Karsten uses Smalltalk and VisualWorks since 8 years, working at Georg Heeg eK. He is one of the developers of seaBreeze and created the tool to find the Bach Haus in Köthen.

Wednesday, August 29

Arden Thomas, Cincom – What Does the Tour de France and Cincom Smalltalk Have in Common?

Bio:
Arden Thomas started using Smalltalk in 1986, when he was researching and exploring better ways to do software development. He found it! Smalltalk and object-oriented were such a profoundly improved approach to software development, that he made a full commitment to using Smalltalk. Arden used Smalltalk in his post-graduate work thesis and projects, as well as building applications for factory floor control for IBM. Arden has worked for Parcplace Systems, ParcPlace-Digitalk, and ObjectShare in a number of capacities including; developer, trainer, architect, consultant, and sales SE. Arden worked for a hedge fund, which ran hundreds of applications in VisualWorks 24/7 to provide traders with decision making information and tools. Arden Thomas is currently the product manager of Cincom Smalltalk. Arden has a blog titled “Less is More” which is an interesting principle, as well as a reference to an attractive design philosophy of Smalltalk.

ArdenThomas and Dirk Verleysen, Cincom – Building a Business with Cincom Smalltalk –Design, Develop and Deploy a Business Application in 45 Minutes

Abstract:
In this presentation, Arden Thomas, the Product Manager for Cincom Smalltalk and Dirk Verleysen, the Lead Engineer for the Modeling and Mapping Tools of Cincom® ObjectStudio® will discuss the processes involved in building software to support a business using Cincom Smalltalk. Arden will discuss the necessary steps in determining a business’s processes and Dirk will visually demonstrate how to use the Modeling, Mapping and other tools, to create software to support a business quickly. Some of the things demonstrated and discussed will be: Modeling the business domain, Automatic code / infrastructure generation, Object Relational mapping, Client and Browser application solutions.

Bios:
Arden Thomas started using Smalltalk in 1986, when he was researching and exploring better ways to do software development. He found it! Smalltalk and object-oriented were such a profoundly improved approach to software development, that he made a full commitment to using Smalltalk. Arden used Smalltalk in his post-graduate work thesis and projects, as well as building applications for factory floor control for IBM. Arden has worked for Parcplace Systems, ParcPlace-Digitalk, and ObjectShare in a number of capacities including; developer, trainer, architect, consultant, and sales SE. Arden worked for a hedge fund, which ran hundreds of applications in VisualWorks 24/7 to provide traders with decision making information and tools. Arden Thomas is currently the product manager of Cincom Smalltalk. Arden has a blog titled “Less is More” which is an interesting principle, as well as a reference to an attractive design philosophy of Smalltalk.

Dirk Verleysen has 23 years of experience working for various industrial and consulting companies and doing projects in different Smalltalks (Cincom® ObjectStudio®, Cincom® VisualWorks®, Smalltalk/V and VA Smalltalk). Dirk has consulted for many companies including Fabelta Ninove, Infosoft, Sanpareil, Roots, KBC Asset Management, Argo and ADP. Dirk joined Cincom Systems, Inc. in 2008 as lead developer for the Modeling and Mapping Tools in ObjectStudio. The Modeling Tool allows a business architect to design and generate the framework for a software system using a powerful UML based tool. The Mapping Tool connects your Smalltalk objects to relational databases easily, using object-relational mapping technology.

Cincom and its clients and partners have a reputation for conducting the highest-quality presentations that can be found anywhere.  So, don’t miss this annual gathering of Smalltalk experts and enthusiasts!  You’ll learn about new developments in the Smalltalk community, what is planned for Smalltalk’s future and how others are using Smalltalk.

For a complete list of ESUG 2012 presentations, visit: http://www.esug.org/wiki/pier/Conferences/2012/Current-List-of-Talks?_s=d6NK6QIL8gzB9u-g&_k=CFt6rZHijzVUsEp2&_n&29

To register for ESUG 2012, visit: http://www.esug.org/wiki/pier/Conferences/2012/Conference-Registration?_s=16SUzlixz8xYrTLd&_k=DjsmVEGyFQe3DJEt&_n&36

See you at ESUG 2012!