What to expect from Appian World 2020

The Computer Weekly Developer Network team is attending Appian World 2020, a conference and exhibition designed to showcase Appian’s approach to enterprise low-code software platform application development.

This year’s event is staged from March 8-11 at the Diplomat Beach Resort in Hollywood, Florida (which people think of as Miami, but actually it’s almost equidistant to Fort Lauderdale).

So what can we expect?

Well, one thing is for sure… at this stage at least we can expect to see the Appian event series keep repeating its US west coast to east coast extremely ‘coastal’ location convention.

Sources suggest that the Appian leadership don’t want to associate the reputation of the company with an event located in Las Vegas (it doesn’t appear to have done SAP, IBM etc. any harm)… but we can understand why in a sense i.e. Appian CEO Matt Calkins is a calmly considered man who probably prefers (nice) hotel locations that don’t quite promote a side order of debauchery.

Core platform

Appian will no doubt focus on the latest developments it has engineered to its Appian AI offering, with AI services powered by Google Cloud Platform for applications built on the Appian Platform.

We’ll hear CRUD again as in CRUD functions: Create, Repeat, Update, Delete… the four basic actions (as Appian sees it) of a good low-code platform.

We can also expect more drag-and-drop functionality (enriched by AI, no doubt) and lots more Agile messaging (all within the context of secure development of course)… and let’s not forget the importance of declarative tools.

With low-code software, declarative tools are implemented through visual models and business rules. Appian has told us before that removing the need to write custom-coding for these mitigates the difficulty of future changes or additions and speeds development times.

There’s more hackathon work this year and attendees can participate in Appian’s third annual global online hackathon and challenge themselves to build a custom app and compete for prizes.

Finalists have been invited to demo at Appian World 20 (as it is known) in front of a panel of judges to determine the winners.

Example sessions include:

A birds-eye view into application design by covering basic terminology, end-user experiences, and workflows with an additional focus on Appian’s recommended record-centric design.
Advance Process Automation by Keeping Automation Technologies in Their Own Lanes.
Appian Cloud 2.0: An Inside Look at the Industry’s Most Secure PaaS Operation.
Succeeding with Low-Code in Healthcare and Life Sciences.
Making Better UIs with the Latest and Greatest SAIL Capabilities

SAIL is Appian’s own patented UI framework.

The ‘big ask’ for 2020

As we have intimated before on the Computer Weekly Developer Network, Appian understands that the initial years in low-code needed a stronger emphasis on enterprise-grade security and scalability. We can expect Appian to talk higher-level certification and solidity in that respect.

A full agenda can be found here and there’s an appropriately introductory ‘getting started’ day on the Sunday before the conference proper kicks off on the Monday.

So what of the celebrity speaker slot? Of course there is one… what conference doesn’t these days?

This time it’s chief chessmaster Garry (why have one R when you can have two?) Kasparov.

The Russian boardgame brain will no doubt deliver his “you have to believe in yourself and have focus… playing on the chessboard is just like life if you think about the complexity of the challenges you face everyday… oh and by the way, please buy my latest book” speech.

We shouldn’t make fun, Andre Agassi (last year’s guest star) was really human, personal and inspiring.

Onward to Florida then, budgie smugglers at the ready just in case there’s time for a dip.

The hashtag for the event is #AppianWorld alongside #lowcode and #automation.

Welcome sir: low-code or cake?

Well….. there’s no way they’d use that picture we posed for in 2019 in the show promotional collateral for 2020, is there?

We’re all feeling awesome… and super-excited!