Live Demos in a Web Seminar: A Refreshing Change to Solving Real World Problems
Since Covid -19 web seminars and webcasts have become an even larger and more integral part of our lives. They have been a welcomed source of information and sharing that has amplified societies success to learning in a virtual world. While it’s great to get more information served to you from the comforts of your home office, the unintended consequence of the web-sharing infusion has been an overdose of PowerPoint slide shows. In many of the casts there is limited “real meat” to chew on from a technology perspective.
We recently participated in a refreshing departure from the “Death by PowerPoint” web seminar. The folks at IntergateLIVE! (www.integratelive.com) have a commitment to sharing technology and making sure you can get your hands dirty afterwards. IntegrateLIVE! is on a mission to humbly (and humorously) share innovation in the automation space through live and unscripted demos that tackle some of the toughest automation and information system challenges. They focus on uniting the problem solvers with hardware/software vendors that have pledged to work together to show the audience how it’s really done, identify what to watch out for and not be bashful to fight through the bugs that always come up when “we go live!” Their mantra is to “lower the learning curve and simplify the necessary integration between solutions” while they “simplify the process of building your own solution”. Through this commitment to open and honest sharing they have created a great community of professionals that share.
In a recent episode of IL! Avanceon partnered up with Software Toolbox (www.softwaretoolbox.com) and Flow Software (www.flow-software.com). The episode focused on, “From Plant Floor to Enterprise: Better decision-making means no data left behind!”. It tackled the challenge of connecting the uncommon (and even ancient) devices from the plant floor to the enterprise data architecture. It focused on accessing data from printers, vibration sensors, and other “tough to talk to stuff”. From that connection the emphasis was on driving decisions and insight via analytics. That goal manifested in a live bar themed demo where Avanceon guided the group through a solution featuring the data connectivity pros from Software Toolbox, Inc. Toolbox and the analytic gurus from Flow Software. They leveraged the “off the shelf magic” of OmniServer and DataHub to push plant floor device data up to Flow for real time enterprise analytics and decision-making.
You can imagine that something that complex couldn’t go off without a hitch. And it didn’t. The inevitable happened. We had the project get away from us. Which you think would be terrible but was AWESOME because it gave us the chance to walk-through real-world troubleshooting and recovery. We took a pause, regrouped, and came back the next week for the “Rundown” where the pros from Software Toolbox and Flow Software brought it home. Success!
This forum and approach to share has been a breath of fresh air in the stagnant world of PPT seminars. I’d encourage you to consider a dose of this approach in future casts you take.
P.S. For a look at the IL! session check out the broadcast @ https://lnkd.in/gDZPvBjv