This post was originally published here
The Microsoft BizTalk Server community is one of the long-standing powerful technical communities in the world I’ve seen in an enterprise segment. For many years community members across the world have done numerous events like user group meetings, community gatherings, innovations days etc. This following LinkedIn statement by Tord Glad Nordahl who works as a Program Manager in BizTalk Server team at Microsoft is a testament to the above statement.
What is Global Integration Boot camp?
The idea of Global Integration Boot camp is pretty simple, uniting all the community members in the Microsoft Integration space across the world and conduct a one-day event on the same day.
Beginning of this year a group of people in the community along with Microsoft decided to go ahead with the plan. Hence the birth of Global Integration Boot camp (GIB).
The date was fixed to March 25th 2017 for the first GIB and a Slack group was set up for the core organizers to communicate. As you can see from the below screen shot from Slack there are 61 members in the group who worked behind the scene to make this event a great success.
Out of that 61 people, there are few outstanding contributors (core organising team) whom I wanted to personally acknowledge and thank for their relentless work behind the scene to make this event a grand success Eldert Grootenboer, Sven Van den brande, Rob Fox, Bill Chesnut, Martin Abbott, Dan Toomey, Glenn Colpaert, Lex Hegt, Steef-Jan Wiggers, Wagner Silveira, and all those people who contributed to GIB.
The format of the event is to have 3 to 4 sessions followed by a lab exercise in each location. The session and labs are focused on the following technology stack (all related to Integration)
BizTalk 2016 : BizTalk Server 2016, what’s new, and using the new Logic Apps adapter
Logic Apps : Creating Logic Apps using commonly-used connectors
Service Bus : Build reliable and scalable cloud messaging and hybrid integration solutions
Enterprise Integration Pack : Using the Enterprise Integration Pack (EIP) with Logic Apps
API Management : How does API management help you organize and secure your APIs
On-Premise Gateway : Connecting to on-prem resources using the On-Premise Gateway
Hybrid Integration : Hybrid integrations using BizTalk Server and Logic Apps
Microsoft Flow : Learn to compose flows with Microsoft Flow
Welcome message from Microsoft Product Group
The Microsoft Product Group from Seattle Jim Harrer, Jon Fancey, Tord Glad Nordahl, Kevin Lam, Jeff Hollan, Darek Li has put together this short intro video to GIB
What are the challenges?
Anything you do for the first time is going to raise a great deal of scepticism whether something like this will work? The organisers did a great job of convincing people across different countries, the list started off some 5-6 countries initially and gradually expanded as the event got the moments. For example a couple of locations were added just 2 or 3 weeks before the event date.
The second biggest challenge was securing venues at different places. In majority of the countries the event was conducted at Microsoft venues and in some places the partner organisations provided the space. It’s not just the space, for a whole day event like this there are a lot of logistics need to be addressed like food, drinks, and in some places security staff etc.
The organizers did an excellent job in addressing these challenges and moving forward seamlessly.
Locations, Organisers, Speakers and Sponsors
Following table summarises all the global locations in total 12 countries and 16 locations. Microsoft played an active role across all the locations in helping local sponsors, organisers to make this event a grand success.
| Country | Location | Organiser | Speakers | Sponsors |
| Australia | Brisbane |
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| Australia | Melbourne |
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| Australia | Sydney |
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| Belgium | Antwerp |
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| Finland | Helsinki |
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| India | Bengaluru |
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| United Kingdom | London |
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| New Zealand | Auckland |
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| Netherlands | Rotterdam |
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| Norway | Oslo |
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| Portugal | Porto |
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| Spain | Madrid |
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| Sweden | Stockholm |
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| United States | Chicago |
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| United States | New York |
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| United States | Seattle |
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Interesting Pictures from the event
These pictures shows the depth of the event across various locations 12 countries, 16 locations, 55 speakers and 650+ attendees.
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Missed out on GIB? then don’t miss INTEGRATE 2017
If you have missed out all the fun of GIB 2017, then don’t miss out attending INTEGRATE 2017. It’s bigger in scale, all the Microsoft Product Group team and majority of the speakers who participated at GIB 2017 will be present in a single location in London. The registrations are now open for INTEGRATE 2017 and filling super fast.
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