Network Dinner @ Wembley

On Thursday night I went (as a guest of Jumar Solutions), to the fabulous Wembley Stadium in London.

The Network Dinners are a great way to meet other Gen practitioners on an intimate basis and discuss the issues of the day, alongside a presentation.

After a tour of the stadium (which is enormous!), where we got the chance to see behind the scenes, in the England changing rooms, go through the tunnel on to the pitch and hear about the history of both the old and the new stadiums (see the pictures below) , we returned to the comforts of the corporate box, some fantastic food and a presentation from Rob Jasper of Schuitema NL, a retailler in Holland on revitalising their 3270 Gen application and the benefits they received from it.

Schuitema used Jumar’s Project Phoenix tools and methods to take their existing 3270 application (store and stock management) and componentise it and layer it such that future changes could be made easier and quicker. They also changed the paradigm from 3270 to the web which allowed them to use other channels such as PDA’s to access the Gen back-end server components.

Using tools like Project Phoenix and CA-Gen allows organisations to levarage existing codebases (which are, after all, an asset) and keep deriving value from them many years after other tools’ value has diminished.

Thanks to Jumar for the hospitality, Rob for the insight into what he does and the other Genners at the event for stimulating, interesting conversation.