With four weeks to go before the Enterprise AppForum 2014 in Brussels I caught up with some of the speakers at the event for an impromptu question and answer session.  With many events you don’t know what you are going to see or hear before you attend and that can make it difficult persuading the boss, or those who hold the purse strings if they’re different people, that making the investment in time and travel is wise when going to any meeting.

So, with that in mind, I talked with some of the speakers to establish what they will be bringing to the attention of the audience making the trip to Brussels and what it is that interests them personally about app development, the area of greatest need in Enterprises worldwide and their passions.

I started off by asking our group of experts what is the biggest challenge facing Enterprises at present? Some of the comments made in response, included:

“Businesses need to understand which part of their operations can and should be mobilized and which should not”.

“User-oriented IT, maximising productivity for every user, with any device, anywhere.”

“In such a fast moving industry, we need to be able to develop apps quickly and easily while providing a great user experience and yet be future-proof so that transiting to new operating systems and devices will be simple and with no hassle.”

“Simplification.  Our customers spend time and effort to make sense of their business and the AppForum should show how developers can create simple, valuable apps that make our customers’ lives easier.”

So it would appear that the four areas of principle concern to the Enterprise as far as our speakers are concerned fall into the following four areas: Understanding of business requirements and capabilities, Ease of orientation and operation, Speed & flexibility of development and Simplification of the overall experience.

When asked what they wanted to take away from the AppForum, the speakers’ responses ranged from “Make new contacts with potential partners and developers” to “understand their use cases for apps and learn about tools and frameworks” as well as “ideas to help make our products even better” and “a better understanding of new features and functionality that developers would like to see in enterprise browsers that would simplify their experience and help them build better, faster enterprise applications.”  All in all, one consistent theme of the responses is that it’s the contact between participants and the exchange of ideas inherent in meeting colleagues and peers that will push the business of app development and hardware alike and help to “solvehard problems”. 

The question “what are you passionate about” is always useful when trying to get under the skin of an event: since speakers are most likely to bring their passions to the table and lay them bare so that others can experience them for themselves.  In the words of one of our speakers “I am always looking for a way to surprise the users of my application; either using creative user-interface elements or new technology features."

And that for us is the point of the Enterprise AppForum.

Come along and be surprised. Visit and take away some thoughts, ideas and contacts that you didn’t have before.

Listen and learn from others experiences: they may be from different countries, fields of expertise or background to you and they may have the key to unlocking an idea you have but have not so far been able to bring to realisation.

Whatever your motivation for attending, the AppForum is on in Brussels from November 18-20. It’s not too late to sign-up to come along.  Simply visit the website and it will take you through the steps to join us.

I will leave you with one final thought. It’s not often that you have an opportunity to attend an event which is for technologists only.  There will be nothing other than a free exchange of ideas and concepts at the AppForum and that alone is surely worth spending some time in convincing your boss that you must be there.

With thanks to the following speakers and participants at the Enterprise AppForum 2104:
• Friedger Muffke, the founder of Droidcon
• Ian Edgson, Senior Field Sales Engineer, Wavelink
• Ben Kennedy, Senior Software Engineer, RhoMobile
• Clemens Suter-Crazzolara, Global Partner Operations, ISVs and Digital Commerce
• Andreas Richter, Senior Technical Architect ENC DACH & ADSP Specialist
• Vojtech Robotka, Solution Center Tech Lead
• Mark Kirstein, Senior Director Enterprise Software
• Landon Essig, Product Management, Enterprise Software team
• Rob Galvin, Developer Community Manager
• Paul Henderson, Software Lead Enterprise Browser