Engage 2026 is over and I have to say it was amazing. It was different without Hilde and Theo organizing it, but their successors Kris, Tom and their lovely wives still made me feel welcome and coming back to a class reunion.
I had the honor to do two sessions this time. One with my old friend Milan which brought a completely new experience — the slide deck was already finished three weeks before the conference even started. That’s a new record. The second one I finished during the train ride to Ghent on Monday, as I’m used to doing it every time.
So where shall I start?
The Venue #
The conference took place in the VIP area of the KAA Gent football stadium. Also a new experience, with open seating areas and the view of the football pitch from the speaker desks.
The Sessions #
HCL Connections Survival Guide for Smart Leaders - Avoiding the Pitfalls #
In this session Milan and I showed some pitfalls we recognized during projects with HCL Connections and wanted to share them with the audience, so that they can avoid stepping into the same errors. We promoted a blameless error culture, as errors can happen, but shouldn’t happen more than once.
Find the slide deck here: Engage2026-ADM06-avoiding-the-pitfalls.pdf
Unmasking the Unknown - Deep Dive Debugging Across WebSphere, Kubernetes, and Browser #
I tried to create a flowchart as a starting point for when there is a need to debug or find an issue in Connections, but most of the session was Connections-independent and can be used with any web application.
The main topic was to reproduce an issue and dig into the root cause and possible solution. Now, after a day of rest, I think it was a bit too much content for 45 minutes and I’m thinking about a way to provide the information in smaller portions. We will see how that works out.
Find the slide deck here: Engage2026-ADM16-Unmasking-the-unknown.pdf
The sessions #
For me the most important session was the HCL Connections roadmap presented by Trevor Tallackson and David Strachan. The outlook is interesting and it seems everything is on track. I forgot to take a photo of the live demo, where David presented some design ideas for the new UI combined with the new Apisix API layer.
I was a bit surprised to hear about a new editor, but I’m curious to see it in action.
There was a lot more and I can just tell you to come over next year and see it for yourself.
The Evening Dinners #
On Monday evening it started with a get-together of all HCL Ambassadors at Ray. A lovely place where we had the opportunity to discuss our software, connect again in person, and chat with some HCLers. Thanks Maria for the organisation.
On Tuesday evening we went to Wintercircus for the Speakers and Sponsors Dinner — a good time to reconnect with old friends.
And on Wednesday I was lucky enough to attend the famous secret speaker dinner. We visited the city brewery Gruut, sampled local beer, and wrapped up the event.
Ghent #
I had the opportunity to walk around Ghent on Thursday morning and found the dragon.
Ghent is a really beautiful city with good public transport. So having the venue a bit out of the centre wasn’t an issue at all, and we headed into the old town each evening.
Conclusion #
Three days packed with information and I got a ton of new ideas which I want to try and test. Now I’m looking forward to DACHNUG.
Oh, I nearly forgot to mention Paul Harrison who created and maintains the mobile app. I had two annoyances with it, but I was just all thumbs and he quickly showed some workarounds. I fear I’m beta testing next year. Thanks Paul!
Thanks again to everyone involved in the organisation of Engage 2026.
