Last week was Connect 2016 and, while I don't have a full review of it, I felt that it was a pretty successful conference. The new venue was much less weird and more purpose-fitting than expected. Moreover, while the conference content wasn't bursting with announcements and in-depth technical dives like at something like WWDC, it did feel a bit more grounded and less marketing-hollow than the last two. So I'll call it a win.

On the OpenNTF front, the conference saw a bit more in the slow rollout of our improved processes and server infrastructure. Prominic has been graciously providing us with servers to run the Atlassian stack of development apps, and we're gradually putting these to use in building and tracking projects run through OpenNTF. Christian Güdemann talked about his company's move to more-structured development using tools like this, as well as an overview of where OpenNTF in particular is heading. Before too long, the OpenNTF Domino API will fall in line with this, switching to a Gitflow-style branch structure and a clean workflow between Stash, Bamboo, and Jira.

The conference also saw the 1.0 release of Darwino. If you're not familiar with it, Darwino is a platform for Java-based development that provides a document database (with improved takes on classic Domino features like hierarchies and reader/author security) and services that will run the same business logic on Java app servers, iOS, and Android. Of particular interest for Connect was the Domino connector, which does two-way replication with Domino databases. The free-for-non-commercial-use Community Edition is a good place to dive in, and we'll be putting out tutorial videos and posts in the weeks to come.

All in all, last week set the stage for the year to come, and I think it should be a very interesting year indeed.