Marco Tech Blog

May 26, 2017

My Visit to Australia and ADUG Symposium

Last week I was in Australia for the ADUG Symposium, and also visited a couple of customers, and spent some time in tourist mode. Here are some pictures.

Last week I was in Australia for the ADUG Symposium, invited by the ADUG committee. For more information about this user groups, which is one of the largest and best organized in the Delphi community, refer to https://www.adug.org.au/.

The event was nice and well organized, I ended up talking over 3 hours each day, but it was great, and we had a lot of interactions around the status of Delphi and its roadmap. The focus of my sessions was Windows 10 and the Delphi language, plus some product status. Overall there wer about 100 Delphi developers among the two events, which was very nice.

Over the week I spent time in Sydney (to visit a customer and at Code Partners office, the local Embarcadero partner), in Brisbane (another customer and the first conference), and in Melbourne (for the second conference and a meeting with the user group committee). The final weekend I had some free time in Melbourne, I used to see around and meet a couple of friends I had not seen for a long time!

Pictures and Pictures

Here are some pictures taken in the various cities I visited, more or less in chronological order. First is the view from the office of a customer I visited:

Yes, you can see the Opera House in the back. But later in the day I has some time and went there:

Following day, we got to Brisbane, where we had the first conference:

Same day we flew to Melbourne, for the next day (larger) event -- Malcolm is speaking here:

Next day I was invited to a meeting of the user group committee, to offer suggestions for events, topics, and have some chat (and some good food offered by one of the members at this house):

The same day, we got back to the city of Melbourne and over Eureka tower (the tallest tower in the Southern atmosphere). This was the view of the downtown area from the tower:

The last day I still had some fre time and ended up looking for penguins out "in the wild"... and I found some near the city, in a small protected area. It was dark, so not great pictures:

That's all. It was a nice trip... looking forward for more Delphi developers to visit around the world!

posted by marcocantu @ 4:33PM | 5 Comments [0 Pending]

5 Comments

My Visit to Australia and ADUG Symposium

Marco

Im glad you enjoyed your visit.

Thank you for your outstanding efforts as keynote speaker at the Australian Symposium

We had a speaker cancel at late notice due to health reasons and Marco stepped in to cover the sessions.  He presented for 6 hours over two days in two cities plus a  
brainstorming session with the committee on the weekend. When you throw in a days travel on either side this was a 5 day effort not including preparation time, so Im glad 
Marco got some down time to enjoy Australia as a tourist.

A fantastic effort and very much appreciated by our members and committee.  THANK YOU MARCO !

The 5th photo is from the ADUG committee brainstorming meeting on the Saturday.  Just when Marco thought he could get some sleep, we invited him to join the committee 
meeting.  He provided a lot of interesting ideas that we are looking into for our monthly meetings and next years 2018 Symposium.

Thanks and stay caffeinated.

Scott Hollows
President, Australian Delphi User Group (ADUG)
president@adug.org.au

Comment by Scott Hollows - President, Australian Delphi User Group (ADUG) [https://www.adug.org.au] on May 27, 05:39

My Visit to Australia and ADUG Symposium

 Nice picture of me stuffing food into my mouth 😀

Comment by Alister Christie [http://learndelphi.tv] on May 27, 08:22

My Visit to Australia and ADUG Symposium

 We appreciated you coming. Phoebe (the white bichon poodle) did 
too!

Comment by Ian Krigsman [] on May 28, 05:23

My Visit to Australia and ADUG Symposium

 Do you see that on each and every Delphi event there are only old white 
haired guys?
This is a sign that delphi is declining slowly.
It is too expensive, too many features witheld from the lower end versions and 
too much uncool for the youth, compared to the cool trendy cheap or mostly 
free alternatives.
The guys on the pictures are all people from back then, when delphi was top. 
They either have good paying jobs and money or they are stuck to their 
memories of past times.

I think you should focus on revitalizing delphi from the ground up and not on 
optimizing cash flow toward more expensive editions.
Or sooner or later you won't have any enterprise that uses delphi anymore 
because there are just no people to hire and no former startup guys that made it 
while sitting in the basement.

I would rethink the plans... the old guys don't get younger and don't stay 
forever...
Go for the masses... all features for everybody, and portable delphi versions 
that you can use on all your devices, and when delphi blossoms and grows, 
you can put up corporate licenses with multi user access and such stuff.
If nobody learns the features in his basement, that you locked away to more 
expensive versions, then companys can't hire new guys and no new giants 
evolve from former 1 man shows basement operations.

Comment by Peter on May 28, 08:29

Reply to Peter

Peter, not all Delphi users are part of the white hair brigade. To be 
fair, I rarely use Delphi and almost exclusively use C++ Builder, 
but I think your comments were probably aimed at either. 

I do agree however with most of what you have to say. There will 
(likely fairly soon) come a time when Embarcadero will have to 
attract a new generation of developers, or face a quickly 
diminishing userbase. The time to begin the process of nurturing 
this new generation is now. Embarcadero has some great tools, but 
unless they can get the word out (and price the product 
appropriately) it's all for nothing.

I believe Embarcadero must get back to basics, and stop assuming 
that everyone has been using Delphi since version 1.0. With this 
mentality, how can they ever hope to appeal to new developers?

Marco's book is a step in the right direction, and probably the only 
useful text that has been written on Delphi in 10 years? 15 even?

Go back to basics. Show people why they should choose Delphi 
over C# or whatever, don't create a huge barrier to entry, and give 
them the support they need to get underway on their journey. 

Invest in the future now, or there will not be any future.

Comment by Roger on June 15, 01:06

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