One of the greatest parts of my job at Infragistics is being able to organize and attend our trade shows and events, and one of my favorites has always been //BUILD/. This year’s event was again in the Moscone West Conference and Convention Center in San Francisco, CA, and it was held April 28-May 1st. Infragistics’ 2015 Booth was #313, so we were again adjacent to the keynote room on the 3rd floor of the Moscone. My event team this year was Alan Halama, Jason Beres, Brian Lagunas, and Ken Azuma. It was an exceptional lineup of company all-stars, with representation across sales, marketing, support and development teams!
The //BUILD/ event was a huge success, beginning with the debut of Infragistics’ Control Freak shirt giveaways. These shirts were custom designed by our internal design team at Cranbury, and we had input from a cross-section of developers, designers, ux pros… essentially any function you can imagine that exists in our office, everyone pitched in at some point in the creation of the new SWAG. It was an absolute pleasure to be able to come home and tell everyone who had contributed that their efforts were well received at the show. Demonstration and product wise, a lot of the team’s time was spent demonstrating a great cross-section of our tools, but by far the most popular demo was our new Xamarin.Forms controls. They’re our newest cross-platform solution, and due to our partnership with Xamarin and Xamarin’s huge footprint at the show, I think they were a perfect compliment to this year’s show. Plus, due to Microsoft’s announcements, we also fielded a lot of questions about Windows Universal App and how that will impact our entire industry.
In addition to the standard conference, this year at //BUILD/ and in conjunction with the Microsoft MVP Program, Infragistics hosted a Microsoft MVP, invitation only, networking and happy hour. In particular this event was a highlight for me since it was the first test of my event-planning skills outside of a standard tradeshow/conference. I personally worked point on everything from the venue selection, food, budget to partnership coordination and SWAG design/pricing. The event took place on the first evening of the conference at an off-site venue, the “Thirsty Bear” brewery. There were tons of MVPs there who all had a chance to pick up some of our custom party SWAG and I heard through the grapevine that many said it was one of their favorite parties of the entire week.
Additionally, as Infragistics is a member of the Visual Studio Industry Partner Program (VSIP), we were encouraged to attend an invitation-only event of our own, and the event team went to the VSIP-only Mixology event on the second night of the show, where we got to talk to other partners and increase our ecosystem presence. The photo to the left is of myself and Infragistics’ VSIP contact, Maude, whom I’ve been working with for a few years and got to spend some time with FINALLY at the VSIP party this year.
Finally, there were two additional highlights that I would like to mention. One is that I was able to coordinate an interview for my team with MSDN magazine! I’m so happy that we were able to orchestrate that and I can’t wait until the edition comes out. ADDITIONALLY, and I had nothing to do with this, but it’s great for my teammate so I’m excited anyhow… my colleague Brian was interviewed on-site at //BUILD/ by Channel9! That interview is live now, and you can check it out here.
Overall and as always, Build 2015 was a successful event for Infragistics as we got to stomp the ground out there with all of you! The team had a great time, and of course I did personally as well! I feel like this event was one of the most successful that I’ve been a part of, to date, and I look forward to continued successes!
Oh. Before I close out… I can’t forget the obligatory “what shoes did Dara wear at the booth at //BUILD/” pic… So here you go!!
