I have just completed day two of ARIS ProcessWorld 2007 the IDS Scheer BPM Event held in Florida’s Amelia Island Plantation. And I’ve finally caught my breath and am able to summarize a few of my impressions of the experience. It was the first time since the official launch of the Business Process Expert Community bpx.sap.com during SAP TechEd ’06 that I’ve had the opportunity to meet recognized Business Process Experts and speaking to some of them about our BPX community proved enlightening, validating, and productive. Lest those of you in cold climates are jealous of the Florida location, know that it was cold here. Because of the intensity of the conference (and maybe the nippy weather), I couldn’t, alas, even stroll on the beautiful beach, although I’m listening to the sound of breaking waves as I type this, providing a little consolation.
This was my first ProcessWorld so it was an innovation to hear founder Dr. August-Wilhelm Scheer open and close his keynote on the saxophone and I didn't need his hints to make the correlation between jazz improvisation and innovation. Other words that come to mind are composition and orchestration.
This all fits in rather nicely with Jeff Dymond’s presentation: SOA by Design or Evolution? “You’ve heard the noise, you’ve read the articles and whitepapers, and by now you are starting to think there might be something to this thing called SOA.” Jeff is a dynamic speaker and I’m looking forward to partnering with him in the BPX context at upcoming Sapphire, ASUG, and industry events.
I had fully intended to record my impressions for you firsthand, but I have to say that no one could beat two resident bloggers for quality of content and speed of delivery. While I was still evangelizing the BPX site in the exhibition room, Sandy Kemsley was churning out incisive commentary about all the sessions she attended and she covered the keynotes so completely I am left here pointing at her excellent content on ebizq. I’ve followed her column2 and found her writing extremely intelligent.
I was also very pleased to meet a new blogger (new to me at least) Vince Outlaw, who challenged us to create a forum for ARIS users who want to connect and collaborate with each other and contribute to the BPX community’s modeling knowledge. Vince attended a session I presented and surprised me this morning with a blog and pics. Vince blogs about Enterprise Architecture and it was fun to see him embed our conversation into his blog.
I'm hoping to see Vince over here in the BPX space really soon.
Most memorable of the contents for me was IDS Scheer's CTO, Dr.Wolfram Jost's definitions. (You may remember an article of his featured when we launched BPX The Age of the CIO is Over) Dr. Jost spoke of Business BPM vs. Technical BPM as well as a crisp mapping of the Business Model to strategy, Business Processes to Business BPM (which Dr. Jost suggests should continously improve the productivity and degree of business processes) and linking business applications to SOA, which he describes succintly as a way to improve the flexibilty of business applications. You can see some highlights of the presentation in Vince's blog captured to flickr.
Wonderful to see a gathering of folks dedicated to Business Process Excellence.
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