Qt World Summit Boston 2018 Was a Huge Success
I just got back from Qt World Summit 2018, held at The Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel. The sold-out show drew more than 450 people. This was the first time the North American show was held on the East Coast since 2003. For Integrated Computer Solutions (ICS) the location was ideal, as our head office is in the Boston metro area.
Keynotes and Training Sessions
This year the schedule was compressed, with an optional training day offered on Monday, followed by the conference proper on Tuesday. Training day offered 11 half- and full-day courses, six presented by ICS.
On Tuesday the conference opened with the keynotes, starting with a look at recent and upcoming developments in Qt by Lars Knoll, the CTO of The Qt Company and Chief Maintainer of the Qt Project. This was following by an interesting talk on the importance of UX design by Jared Spool, founder of User Interface Engineering (UIE), the largest usability research organization of its kind. There also were customer keynotes describing some successful Qt projects in different industry sectors.
The afternoon included eight tracks and more than 25 talks, among them ICS CEO Peter Winston's Secrets to a Winning Qt Application — Lessons Learned from 500+ Successful Projects, and ICS' Director of Engineering Roland Krause's Incorporating Alexa Voice Recognition into Your Qt Application.
With more than 450 attendees, the keynotes and most of the talks were packed, in many cases standing-room-only. The talks this year were a little shorter than in the past, with a 30-minute schedule from the start of each talk to the start of the next. At first I wasn't sure I liked the format, but after attending several talks I found that this abbreviated format allowed for more presentations to be packed into the one-day show, which was great in terms of maximizing exposure to lots of new information. (Plus, with only 25 minutes each to talk, the speakers had to make the most efficient use of their time.)
Product Demos
The demo area encompassed booths from more than a dozen vendors of Qt-based products and services, including ICS. Our exhibit featured demos of a number of medical and automotive products, among them an infusion system for Ivenix, a connected-car HMI, Alexa Voice Control for Infotainment and Navigation (pictured below, left) and a Mentor Graphics application (pictured below, right). Another draw in the ICS booth: an interactive kiosk with a quiz testing visitors' knowledge of Qt programming and trivia.
The consensus was that it was a very successful show with intriguing talks and opportunities to meet and network with other Qt professionals. If you missed the Boston show, consider attending the European show, which will be held in Berlin on December 5-6. Here's the registration link.