Global Integration Boot camp – a great success story

The Microsoft BizTalk Server community is one of the long-standing powerful technical communities in the world I’ve seen in an enterprise segment. For many years community members across the world have done numerous events like user group meetings, community gatherings, innovations days etc. This following LinkedIn statement by Tord Glad Nordahl who works as a Program Manager in BizTalk Server team at Microsoft is a testament to the above statement.    

What is Global Integration Boot camp?

The idea of Global Integration Boot camp is pretty simple, uniting all the community members in the Microsoft Integration space across the world and conduct a one-day event on the same day. Beginning of this year a group of people in the community along with Microsoft decided to go ahead with the plan. Hence the birth of Global Integration Boot camp (GIB). The date was fixed to March 25th 2017 for the first GIB and a Slack group was set up for the core organizers to communicate. As you can see from the below screen shot from Slack there are 61 members in the group who worked behind the scene to make this event a great success. Out of that 61 people, there are few outstanding contributors (core organising team) whom I wanted to personally acknowledge and thank for their relentless work behind the scene to make this event a grand success Eldert Grootenboer, Sven Van den brande, Rob Fox, Bill Chesnut, Martin Abbott, Dan Toomey, Glenn Colpaert, Lex Hegt, Steef-Jan Wiggers, Wagner Silveira, and all those people who contributed to GIB. The format of the event is to have 3 to 4 sessions followed by a lab exercise in each location. The session and labs are focused on the following technology stack (all related to Integration) BizTalk 2016 : BizTalk Server 2016, what’s new, and using the new Logic Apps adapter Logic Apps : Creating Logic Apps using commonly-used connectors Service Bus : Build reliable and scalable cloud messaging and hybrid integration solutions Enterprise Integration Pack : Using the Enterprise Integration Pack (EIP) with Logic Apps API Management : How does API management help you organize and secure your APIs On-Premise Gateway : Connecting to on-prem resources using the On-Premise Gateway Hybrid Integration : Hybrid integrations using BizTalk Server and Logic Apps Microsoft Flow : Learn to compose flows with Microsoft Flow

Welcome message from Microsoft Product Group

The Microsoft Product Group from Seattle Jim Harrer, Jon Fancey, Tord Glad Nordahl, Kevin Lam, Jeff Hollan, Darek Li has put together this short intro video to GIB

What are the challenges?

Anything you do for the first time is going  to raise a great deal of scepticism whether something like this will work? The organisers did a great job of convincing people across different countries, the list started off some 5-6 countries initially and gradually expanded as the event got the moments. For example  a couple of locations were added just 2 or 3 weeks before the event date. The second biggest challenge was securing venues at different places. In majority of the countries the event was conducted at Microsoft venues and in some places the partner organisations provided the space. It’s not just the space, for a whole day event like this there are a lot of logistics need to be addressed like food, drinks, and in some places security staff etc. The organizers did an excellent job in addressing these challenges and moving forward seamlessly.

Locations, Organisers, Speakers and Sponsors

Following table summarises all the global locations in total 12 countries and 16 locations. Microsoft played an active role across all the locations in helping local sponsors, organisers to make this event a grand success.

Country	Location	Organiser	Speakers	Sponsors
Australia	Brisbane	Dan Toomey	Dan Toomey Ashley Knowles Lee Simpson	Mexia
Australia	Melbourne	Bill Chesnut	Bill Chesnut Nathan Fernandez Sonja Bijou Paco de la Cruz Tanvir Chowdhury	SixPivot InterprIT Mexia
Australia	Sydney	Rene Brauwers	Rene Brauwers Mick Badran	MOQdigital
Belgium	Antwerp	Sven Van den brande Glenn Colpaert	Toon Vanhoutte Steven Van Eycken Glenn Colpaert Jochen Toelen	BizTalk User Group
Finland	Helsinki	Sakari Nahr Karl Ots	Karl Ots Sami Ovaska Teemu Tapanila	Kompozure
India	Bengaluru	Arunkumar Kumaresan Sriram Hariharan	Deepak Rajendran Tulika Chaudharie Harikharan Krishnaraju Shailesh Agre Shree Divya Sunny Sharma Lohith G Nagaraj Sajith C P Roy Joseph Rekha Kodali	BizTalk360
United Kingdom	London	Saravana Kumar Lex Hegt	Nino Crudele Ashwin Prabhu Michael Stephenson Lex Hegt Saffi Ali	BizTalk360 Codit UK
New Zealand	Auckland	Wagner Silveira Mark Brimble	Wagner Silveira Nikolai Blackie James Corbould Morten Velling Abhishek Kumar	Datacom Adaptiv Theta
Netherlands	Rotterdam	Microsoft Integration User Group	Tomasso Groenendijk Rob Fox Eldert Grootenboer Steef-Jan Wiggers	Motion10
Norway	Oslo	Dominic Akadimah	Richard Hallgren Robin Hultman Jan Harald Hole Mortensen Kjetil Tonstad	Communicate Norge
Portugal	Porto	Sandro Pereira	Sandro Pereira Ricardo Torre José António Silva Pedro Sousa João Ferreira	Devscope
Spain	Madrid	Kabel Sistemas	Mariano Robles Carlos Sacristan Felix Mondelo Felipe Senso Ivan Canizares Francisco Nieto	Kabel Sistemas
Sweden	Stockholm	Johan Hedberg	Johan Hedberg Mattias Lögdberg Mikael Sand Samuel Kastberg Alan Smith Mikael Håkansson	BizTalk User Group Sweden
United States	Chicago	Jaidev Kunjur	Jaidev Kunjur	Enkay Tech
United States	New York	Howard Edidin	Mandi Ohlinger Howard Edidin Stephen Thomas Kent Weare	VNB Consulting
United States	Seattle	Thomas E. Canter	Richard Seroter Kevin Lam Nick Hauenstein Jeff Hollan Gautam Gyanendra Ashish Bhambhani	Phidiax QuickLearn

Interesting Pictures from the event

These pictures shows the depth of the event across various locations 12 countries, 16 locations, 55 speakers and 650+ attendees.

Missed out on GIB? then don’t miss INTEGRATE 2017

If you have missed out all the fun of GIB 2017, then don’t miss out attending INTEGRATE 2017. It’s bigger in scale, all the Microsoft Product Group team and majority of the speakers who participated at GIB 2017 will be present in a single location in London. The registrations are now open for INTEGRATE 2017 and filling super fast.