I’m getting ready to head for Fort Lauderdale for my last conference (and, I hope, flight) of the year: Building Business Capability. This conference grew out of the Business Rules Forum when it added tracks for business process, business analysis and business architecture, so technically it includes Business Rules Forum, Business Analysis Forum, Business Architecture Summit and Business Process Forum, but there’s so much overlap in interest that it’s fair to say that few people stick just to one track at this event.
I have a couple of spots in the conference this week, starting on Monday morning when I am giving a tutorial on aligning BPM and enterprise architecture, similar to that which I gave at the IRM BPM conference in London in June. It’s October 31st so Halloween costumes are optional, but I will give a prize for the best one worn by a tutorial attendee.
On Tuesday afternoon, I’m moderating a BPM vendor panel focused on BPM adoption issues from the vendors’ point of view. I’m a bit late with my plug for this since there was some confusion about who was actually picking the panelists (as I found out a few days ago, it was me), but I’ve assembled a stellar lineup:
- Jesse Shiah, Founder and CEO at AgilePoint. I first met Jesse back at the BPM Think Tank in 2007, when his company was still called Ascentn; since then, they’ve changed it to something that we can all pronounce while they work at turning Microsoft’s Visio and Visual Studio into real BPM tools.
- Mihnea Galeteanu, Chief Storyteller for BlueworksLiveat IBM. Besides having the coolest job title, Mihnea and I both live in Toronto, so have the advantage of being able to really put “social” into BPM by meeting for coffee to discuss how IBM is making BPM social with BlueworksLive. Yes, I make him pay for the coffee.
- Jeremy Westerman, Senior Product Marketing Manager for BPM at TIBCO. Part of TIBCO’s “British invasion”, Jeremy and I have a long history of me asking him about what’s coming up in their product releases (such as “how’s that AMX/BPM to tibbrintegration coming along?”), and him trying to say things that won’t get him in trouble with TIBCO’s legal department. Obviously, he’s a big fan of my “everything is off the record after the bar opens” rule.
- Thomas Olbrich, Cofounder and Managing Director at taraneon. Unlike the other vendors on the panel which provide implementation tools, taraneon provides a process test facility for process quality, meaning that they have the best process horror stories of all. Thomas is the only one of the panelists who I haven’t met face-to-face before now, although I feel like I know him because of our lengthy Twitter exchanges, only some of which are about shoes.
There’s also a rumor that I’m moderating a panel on Wednesday afternoon on business architecture versus technology architecture, although I have yet to hear any details about it.
If you’re interested in trying out a social conference site, you can find BBC on Lanyrd, where you can indicate that you’re attending, speaking at, or just tracking the conference, as well as adding any sessions that you’re interested in. Note that this is an independent crowdsourced social conference site, not an official site of the BBC conference. You can also follow the conference on Twitter at #bbccon11.
BPM 2011, the 9th annual academic research conference on BPM in Clermont-Ferrand. where I will be keynoting the industry track. I have attended this conference for the past few years and am hugely honored to be asked to keynote. I love this conference because it gives me a peek into the academic research going on in BPM – although I barely remember what an eigenvector is, I can always see some good ideas emerging here that will undoubtedly become some software vendor’s killer feature in a few years. This conference was in the US last year for the first time (it is usually in Europe, where a great deal of the research goes on) and I encouraged a lot of US BPM vendors to attend; hopefully, they will have seen the value in the conference and will get themselves on an international flight this time.
Building Business Capability