Sunday evening, while waiting for the Opening Session to begin, I met a college professor from Louisiana.  He worked hard to persuade his University to spend $2000 to send him to BorCon., and obviously, he was successful.  This gentleman was at BorCon because he discovered the "productivity benefits" of using Borland software.  He is interested in exploring how to integrate these tools into their curriculum and in some of the universities applications.  This conversation caused me to wonder why Borland doesn't do more to encourage teaching of their products on our college campuses.  Boy, did Borland have a surprise for me (keep reading)!

The Opening Session began with lots of fanfare and energy.  David I., Borland's chief evangelist, promised that we would see more of this (energy and fanfare) during the week.  I was very impressed with a 3-5 minute ,well-produced marketing video which could be broken up into some great TV commercials however, we can only see this stuff at BorCon.  A question for Dale and David: Why is that so?  The ads that I see on TV from other technology companies are not this good!

David I. reminded the attendees that they were part of an international event.  Borland will hold additional conferences in Germany, India, France, China and Japan this year.  

An new acronym was introduced during this session, SDO.  Dale Fuller, Borland CEO, explained that this stands for "Software Delivery Optimization".  Dale characterized this concept by emphasizing Borland's  commitment to developers when he stated, "Our focus is developer productivity".  

It seems that the  SDO concept begins with the developer but it extends to everyone involved in the app development lifecycle.  During the session, we were shown a "what if" video that depicted what Borland software might look like in the future.  Among other interesting concepts, we saw a Software Quality Reviewer researching programmer productivity by listening to music.  This music was composed by the defect history data of a software project.  Pleasant music indicated high productivity and few defects.  Have you ever wondered what your work sounds like?  Hmm, what if  the reviewer could then automatically generate training topics based on the same data?

Moving right along, Dale also mentioned that Borland was doing very well indeed and boasted 18 consecutive profitable quarters.  He mentioned that Borland was uniquely positioned to meet the needs of a development community which never completes 1/3 of its development projects   Dale highlighted the need to address the current state of the development lifecycle where a requirements change can at worst kill a project or dramatically affect the cost of delivery.

I came away from this presentation with the distinct impression that Borland recognizes an opportunity to reach into the enterprise as never before and that the "big boys" are about to get a wake-up call from Borland.  Indeed, Dale mention a Fortune 100 company that has standardized on Borland products (1800 seats) after recognizing  the productivity and competitive advantages of doing so.  Dale also mentions some high-profile projects that have been successfully deployed using their products. 

Borland also presented its Customer of the Year and President's award (see the Borland Conference site for a list of winners).  The award that got my attention (and everyone else's), was the award of a check for $1,000,000!s   Yes, you read this correctly.  The check was presented to Carnegie Mellon University.  Carnegie Mellon is rated as the #1 Computer Science university in the U.S. Carnegie focuses on real world training and partners with the business community to ensure that graduates are prepared to meet the challenges that face them.  This is good stewardship and good marketing, go Borland!  Needless to say, the professor who sat next to me was watching with "eyes wide-open".  It is interesting to note that 60 other universities cane within 1/2 of a percentage point of winning this award.

We were also given a glimpse of Diamondback via a David I. MTV-like video.  More on this tomorrow.

The Sunday night party was great.  Food, drink, video games, pool tables, foosball, gambling tables and a slamming;' band all in a Mardi Gras-like atmosphere.    See you tomorrow... 

As an example of this initiative, Borland has revealed that  components of StarTeam , a comprehensive software configuration management system, will be integrated into the next version of Delphi.  The next Delphi will boast refactoring features  unit testing and an auto-backup tool called History Manager.  These features along with others, reveal two things, 1) Borland really wants to help us generate better code faster and 2) the IDE wars are on!! 

Borland has been working closely with companies like Process Exchange  to enhance its internal processes using its own software.  Borland is using the acquired knowledge to improve its products.   We can expect new products from Borland to include features that address all aspects of the development lifecycle.   SDO, Software Delivery Optimization,  speaks of  Borland's vision to infuse their products with features that will optimize the process of producing a software deliverable.  

 I personally love this initiative.  Many programmers just want to know if the features they want or need will be in the next version of a particular product.  I want this too, but, I come to conferences like this in search of ideas and technology that helps me to be more productive and to produce better software.  Borland has decided to focus on helping us ramp-up quality -- whether that is our focus or not!  Go Borland! 

Wow!  Diamondback was unveiled today.  How do  I describe Diamondback ?  Scary, awesome,  and on-target come to mind.  Scary because their is so much new stuff you wonder just how bug-free it is going to be.  Awesome because attendees, who packed out the Diamondback preview, applauded long and loudly after seeing just a glimpse of the capabilities of this forthcoming product.   On-target because it appears that Borland has listened to developers and given us much of what we want.

 The Borland development Team is calling it, "The Ultimate Delphi".  Delphi on steroids came to mind  as I listened and watched the demos.  I don't know that I can do Diamondback justice, but, here we go.:

Click here for a Diamondback  Sneak Peak.

When will Diamondback ship?  Borland won't say.  But, here are some clues.  All the speakers at BorCon were required to use Diamondback (if applicable) in their presentations.  There were a few re-boots, but for the most part the product was pretty stable.  All attendees at BorCon got a Diamondback CD, again testifying to its relative stability.  Attendees who purchase Delphi 8 along with a 1 year product assurance plan were guaranteed a copy of Diamondback when it ships.  This puts the ship date < 1 year.  Let's hope that Borland does not rush it, but ships when the product is ready.

If you subscribe to Delphi 3000 (trial subscription is free), Eber Irigoyen has a very detailed feature list in his What's New in Diamondback article.

There are a lot of bloggers documenting what is happening at BorCon.  See the links in the left column.  On Tuesday and Wednesday, I will try to bring you some info that you may not see in other places.

The Future of Kylix.  Kylix is not dead!  Michael Swindoll announced the formation of the Kylix Community Project.  A to Zed's Chan Hower is among those who have been assigned to the project team.  Future updates to Kylix will come through this project.  How do you say open source without saying open source?  There will be no CLX in Diamondback !

Also see the FreeCLX Community Project

Delphi 7 Updates. It was interesting to listen to David I. (caught in the hallway) discuss Borland's thinking concerning how to deal with D7 and its upgrade issues while secretly creating a new code base for Win32 in Diamondback.  Borland had to balance the need for fixes and requested features, loyalty to its users and fiscal realities.  Wisely, Borland chose to provide updates to D7 (for which they receive no income) while forging ahead with Diamondback .  Go Borland!

The Future of C++ Builder. I did not attend the Meet the Team or any of the C++ sessions.  Check out Paul Gustavson's review for info on C++.

Borland Careful About Perceived Competition with MS.  Borland is careful about what they say about Microsoft and about the positioning of Diamondback .  It was interesting and a little strange to hear Microsoft's Rick LaPlante, General Manager of the Visual Studio Team, discuss the future of VS while Diamondback fever was raging throughout BorCon.  The audience as you might expect, was a bit tepid in their response to VS.    Borland's official position is that "Microsoft and Borland are close partners in making great development products for Windows and .NET".   Borland has declared that they are not competing with VS.  Rick LaPlante mentioned that there are a number of Borland products that can be integrated with VS ( I believe that the number is 6).  To see a more complete perspective of Borland's position see Michael Swindoll's blog on the InfoWorld article,  Borland looks to take on Visual Studio with Diamondback .

The Borland/Microsoft relationship seems to be quite cozy.  I overheard some attendees remark that "Borland seems to be a MS subsidiary".  The truth is that both companies need each other and have established a good working relationship.

The Visual Studio Designer.  From what I understand (and admittedly, I don't know much), Microsoft is not licensing the VS designer.  If I understand this correctly, innovations and designer improvements will have to come from MS or those MS partners with to do this work.  In other words, we will NOT see hot new designer features that MS will not also have in VS.  Chew on this for a while and let me know what you think.

So You Want to Be a BorCon Speaker?  I dropped in on am interesting  Bird's of a Feather gathering conducted by Cary Jensen.  Aspiring BorCon speakers discovered "need to know info" in this gathering.  Cary did an excellent job discussing the Advisory Board's selection process and balancing the obstacles and opportunities. 

The Advisory Board has a responsibility to select appropriate topics and speakers that will be successful in communicating the requisite content.  Here are a few of my gleanings.  Prepare!  Learn all that you can about public speaking.  Practice!  Speak at your local user group meetings (they need you BTW) and other regional meetings or conferences.  Write.  If you speak at BorCon, papers will be required.  Write articles for magazines and programming web sites.  Doing these things will make others aware of you , your interests and capabilities.  Learn.  Pay attention to the type of topics that are presented at BorCon.  Inappropriate topics are rejected quickly.  Vendor solutions are generally presented in a Vendor Showcase, for example.  Sell.  If you have successfully delivered well-received topics in another forum, mention this when you submit your abstract.  If Borland does not know you, let them know who does and mention the impact of your presentation to them.

I was asked by an Advisory Board Member after the session if they could expect an abstract from me next year.  I replied, "I doubt that", as my interest in the session was to glean info for this report.  I was also interested to hear what one of my favorite speakers, Cary Jensen, had to say about public speaking, as I do get opportunities to speak in other venues (primarily churches) several times a year.

Carnegie Mellon University.  As noted above, I believe that Borland demonstrated wisdom by endowing CMU with $1 million.  I stopped by CMU's vendor booth and was very impressed with their Master's Program.  CMU sets up a team project in which the student has to collaborate with others to complete a real-world project and produce the goods.  You can work on this remotely (in other words, at home).  After discussing the particulars with the CMU rep, I almost enrolled on the spot :).  For more info about CMU, visit  http://west.cmu.edu/. 

Sponsors and Exhibitors. Due to my illness, I did not get to spend as much time as I desired in the exhibit hall.  I did talk to a number of vendors but I did not see anything "earth-shaking".

Note: I will continue to update this page with links to other BorCon info for the next few weeks as I discover them.  If you discover interesting articles or other info, please send me the links and I will post them.