by Martin Therkelsen, CTP

Hi all,

Citrix Converge 2020 is happening from November 2nd to November 13th and I wanted to share some of my insights into this conference.

To be honest, I was not really thinking much about Citrix Converge 2019 when I first heard about it. The conference was presented as a developer conference, so I did not really think I would fit in for that type of conference since I am primarily a Citrix and Microsoft architect with a focus on automation. Since I was a bit curious about what the conference was all about, I decided to look a bit into the agenda and prerequisites and found that basically, the conference was focused on a new product from Citrix and that all you need to bring is an understanding of REST APIs and an open mind. Now I might not be a REST API ninja, but it is something I have worked with–so now the conference did sound interesting to me. Thus, in October 2019, a colleague and I packed our bags and took the long trip from Denmark to San Jose, California to join the Citrix Converge 2019 conference. It was an AWESOME experience and I got to meet a lot of new people and learn a ton of new stuff. One of the people I met was CTA Preston Gallwas, who co-authored a blog post about the experience for CUGC, which you can read here.  

Citrix Developer? Coder? Automator?

The first two Citrix Converge conferences (2019 and Spring 2020) focused solely on MicroApps and how they can help employees get more productive and reduce the content switching they experience so many times each day. MicroApps are cool and they have some great potential when you find the rights spots to use them. These spots can be tasks like time schedule approvals, travel expense creations and approval, etc. With Citrix Converge 2020, Citrix is bringing the conference to a whole new level where everyone can join in. Converge 2020 is all about helping employee productivity, automating Citrix components to ensure consistency, making administrators’ daily work easier with automated reports and remediations, creating applications and workflow and so much more. Basically, if you write any form of script or code to integrate with a Citrix product, this is the conference to be in!

Hackathon

Citrix Converge will run for two weeks and as with the Spring edition of Converge 2020, this Fall event will also have a hackathon with some amazing prizes! The hackathon will run thoughout the event, so I suggest you put on your creative hat and find a good colleague and join the hackathon. Based on the first two Converge events, the submissions come from all over the globe and they bring some amazing innovation and creativity. I have been lucky enough to work with some of the winners of previous events and they come from very diverse day jobs but all have the same mindset of wanting to innovate and contribute to making work as fun and easy as possible. You can see some of the previous submissions to Converge events on YouTube by clicking here.

Sessions

A new addition to Converge is the sessions track. This track will contain prerecorded sessions from both Citrix and the Community, but will also include live Q&A with the speakers. The recordings allow the sessions to be more controlled in terms of time, and the Q&A with the speakers is a great way to engage with other community members. The community tracks will be very technical where the speakers are often known experts in their field, but they also leave room to speakers that are not as well-known yet. The submissions for sessions have been open for everyone, so tracks will have different topics across three main areas. I know some of the community members who have submitted a session and from that alone, I am pretty sure it will be awesome content all around.

My Plans for Converge 2020

This year I have not submitted any sessions because I have lacked the time to prepare a good session. I have of course signed up for the conference and I will also be participating in the hackathon with some of my colleagues. I have heard some of the topics on sessions and I already know these are some must-attend sessions for me. From what I have heard, the sessions will be made available after the conference as well, but I want to join the Q&A so I can ask all my questions to the speakers and engage with them.

I really hope you will join me in attending this great conference.

Link to registration is here.