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Technology Announcements and Reflections on GX29 Builders

The 29th innovation and software meeting hosted by GeneXus inspired software builders around the world. These days of intense activity were documented in more than 150 videos that address the multiple aspects of the industry. They are all available online!

In this 29th GeneXus Meeting, GX29 Builders, the company celebrated its building nature, as well as its ongoing evolution over decades. 
 
The GeneXus Meeting gathered 4,000 attendees from 50 countries, as well as about 50,000 online attendees via streaming from all over the world.
 
Artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, the transport of the future, blockchain, quantum computing, business in the digital age, design and automations, bots and integration between technology, people and situations, the Internet of Things; and many more topics were addressed during the three-day event.
 

First day - GeneXus announcements  

SAP and AI, machine learning: On the first day of the GeneXus Meeting, Nicolás Jodal, said that part of the strategy to continue building is to create more alliances with leading global companies:  “We’ve made alliances with the world’s largest players, including Amazon, Microsoft, SAP, among others,” and along those lines he announced the completion of a project of Co-Innovation between GeneXus and SAP, which enables the GeneXus platform to simplify the creation of Machine Learning apps using the services of SAP Leonardo Machine Learning Foundation. 
 
IoT, Hardware, algorithms, neural networks: According to the new trend in sensors, the hardware that is currently being made is interesting for Mr. Jodal due to the possibility of data processing in the sensor itself: “This year I’m talking about hardware again and it's because of Edge Computing. This is the next generation of IoT; to cause the data generated on the edge, in the sensors, to be also processed.” On this stage, a sophisticated autonomous wheelbarrow called MadMax was introduced.
 
Chatbots and new generators: Among other first day announcements, attendees were encouraged to generate new instances for interaction between GeneXus and its Chatbot Generator that is now integrated into the WhatsApp channel. Also, on the first day of the Meeting a new Angular generator for webapps (Customer-facing web applications) was announced, as well as ongoing work on a new generator of mini-programs for the Chinese platforms Wechat, Baidu, and Alibaba.

Global experts and opinion leaders who’ve made a difference

 Among the experts who traveled to Uruguay for the Meeting was Bibop Gresta, President of Hyperloop TT,  who talked about how he will transform the world of transport with his project that aims to set the basis for sustainable transport based on renewable energy. He announced that the Hyperloop capsule will be installed in Abu Dhabi in 2020 and will transport 8 people at 1200 km/h. It will be powered by solar energy, will move by levitation and could produce 30% more energy than it consumes.
 
The presentation given by Uruguay-born Alejandro Urrutia (who has been living in China for the past 7 years) based on his design experience at Huawei and in the Chinese market was also very inspiring. In it, he talked about his creation of Snapp, a bot that automates design, improving efficiency and productivity for UI designers.
 
Other highlighted sessions: This year’s presentation by technology influencer Eliax, always eagerly awaited and surprising, was about the powers of automation; the inspiring talk of Pipe Stein (Notable); the presentation by Fernando Brum to catch up with innovation in data management for senior management (National Agency for Research and Innovation - ANII); presentations by Sylvia Chebi and Flavio Caiafa about the ecosystem of technology startups (ThalesLab); Daniel Fernández Koprich (from Memética Chile) talked about Business in the Digital Age; Wilson Pais, Roberto Icasuriaga and Eduardo Mangarelli (Microsoft LATAM) addressed topics related to Quantum Computing, Artificial Intelligence, and ethics; Alberto Oppenheimer (SAP) spoke about digital integration and transformation in smart companies. And the list goes on! There were more than 150 sessions, in addition to the brilliant opening and closing talks by GeneXus Directors Nicolás Jodal and Breogán Gonda. 
 
Roberto Musso, the musician from Cuarteto de Nos, was present at the closing of GX29. A few weeks earlier he had released the new song: “Contrapunto para humano y computadora” (Verse-battling for a human and a computer), which was inspired by his attendance to previous GeneXus Meetings. 
 

The technology map and state of the art of software according to Breogán Gonda

In his closing session, Breogán Gonda reflected on education, software training, and the industry. Since today’s companies can have systems with up to 500 million lines of code, it is clear that nobody can handle them manually; in this scenario, the excuse for the lack of qualified professionals is not applicable, and it doesn’t solve the problem, either. The President of the Board at GeneXus, Breogán Gonda, said the following in his closing session: “30 years ago we created GeneXus and managed to sell it. Then we realized that what we were doing was very important; we had a great responsibility in terms of maintenance, support, and training. And we saw very clearly that customers need solutions. Even more so today that systems are becoming increasingly complex: they must be efficient and increasingly user-friendly.”

In addition to the shortage of trained professionals, the world is becoming more complex. The technology map is chaotic and several controversies have emerged over the use of one type of software or another. For example, Mr. Gonda began by pointing out that there has always been controversy over the use of proprietary and free software. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. Also, throughout the history of software, some of them have disappeared. At the end of his presentation, Mr. Gonda concluded that things have to be made more efficient and easier to use. You can watch the session here:


 

All sessions can be watched here: www.genexus.com/GX29