July 30, 2025 • 28 mins
Shawn Tierney meets up with Paul Scott of Inductive Automation to learn all about this year's Ignition Community Conference in this episode of The Automation Podcast.
For any links related to this episode, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.
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Special thanks to Inductive Automation for sponsoring this episode so we could release it ad free on all platforms! To learn more about the Ignition Community Conference, see the below links:
Ignition Community Conference
Download Ignition
Inductive University - Learn Ignition for free
The Forum: Talk to the Ignition Community
Schedule An Ignition Demo
Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)
Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey, everybody. Thank you for tuning back in. It's Shawn here from Insights and Automation. And in this episode of the automation podcast, I meet up with Paul Scott from Inductive Automation to learn all about the Ignition Community Conference. Now if you're like me and you like going to these things, meeting other users and learning what's new and coming out for the product, then I think you'll enjoy this episode.
And, you know, if you use Ignition or you're thinking about using it, you really should consider looking into the community conference because it's a unique once a year event that, really allows you to get a look at the not only the product, but their partners and talk to other users of the software. Now if you are interested, I'm gonna include all the top links in the description in the show notes so you'll have them on whatever platform you're viewing or listening on. And I also wanna thank Inductive for sponsoring this episode so it would be ad free, both the video and audio editions. So thank you very much to them because we always like it when it's ad free. Right?
With that said, let's go ahead and jump into this week's episode of the automation podcast and learn all about the Ignition Community Conference. I wanna welcome to the show Paul from Inductive. I'm so excited to have you guys on. This is the third appearance from somebody from Inductive on the show. And, before we start talking about the upcoming conference, which I've covered in years past, before we start covering that, could you introduce yourself to our audience?
Paul Scott (Ignition): Sure thing. Yeah. Thanks, Shawn. Happy to be here. So, yeah, my name is Paul Scott.
I joined Inductive Automation in 2013 as a tech support rep. And then I, a couple years later, switched over to an instructor role, which sort of got me into documentation, which is where I currently am right now. I oversee our technical documentation as well as, our video library, Inductive University. I like to tell people that's my day job. The reason I'm here today, is, because of the conference.
So I also help out with managing content for our annual conference, the Ignition Community Conference or ICC, as you'll you'll only say a whole lot. So
Shawn Tierney (Host): yeah. That's cool. And now I've covered it in the past. You guys do so much cool stuff, but I don't you know, because it's, you know, I think a lot of the audience have been to, you know, maybe more regional shows they may not be as familiar with. You know?
What we find a lot in our industry is a lot of people don't get to travel to every show. There's so many that go on through at least just even North America, never mind the entire world. And so can you tell them a little bit about, you know, what the show is like, what there is to do if they go, and, you know, just from there, tell us about the the the conference.
Paul Scott (Ignition): Sure. Yeah. I if you've never been to ICC before, I'd like to tell you that it's probably a little bit different than a lot of these sort of ...
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey, everybody. Thank you for tuning back in.
It's Sean here from Insights and Automation. And
in this episode of the automation podcast,
I meet up with Paul Scott from Inductive
Automation
to learn all about the Ignition Community Conference.
Now if you're like me and you like
going to these things, meeting other users and
learning what's new
and coming out for the product, then I
(00:21):
think you'll enjoy this episode. And, you know,
if you use Ignition or you're thinking about
using it, you really should consider looking into
the community conference because it's a unique once
a year event that,
really allows you to get a look at
the not only the product, but their partners
and talk to other users of the software.
Now if you are interested, I'm gonna include
(00:42):
all the top links in the description in
the show notes so you'll have them on
whatever platform you're viewing or listening on. And
I also wanna thank Inductive for sponsoring this
episode so it would be ad free, both
the video and audio editions. So thank you
very much to them because we always like
it when it's ad free. Right? With that
said, let's go ahead and jump into this
(01:03):
week's episode of the automation podcast and learn
all about the Ignition Community Conference. I wanna
welcome to the show Paul
from Inductive. I'm so excited to have you
guys on. This is the third appearance from
somebody from Inductive on the show. And, before
we start talking about the upcoming conference, which
I've covered in years past,
before we start covering that, could you introduce
(01:25):
yourself to our audience?
Sure thing. Yeah. Thanks, Sean. Happy to be
here. So, yeah, my name is Paul Scott.
I joined Inductive Automation in 2013 as a
tech support rep.
And then I, a couple years later, switched
over to an instructor role, which sort of
got me into documentation, which is where I
currently am right now. I oversee our technical
documentation as well as, our video library, Inductive
University.
(01:46):
I like to tell people that's my day
job. The reason I'm here today,
is, because of the conference. So I also
help out with managing content for our annual
conference, the Ignition Community Conference or ICC, as
you'll you'll only say a whole lot. So
yeah.
That's cool. And now I've covered it in
the past. You guys do so much cool
stuff, but I don't you know, because it's,
(02:07):
you know, I think a lot of the
audience have been to, you know, maybe more
regional shows they may not be as familiar
with. You know? What we find a lot
in our industry is a lot of people
don't get to travel
to every show. There's so many that go
on through at least just even North America,
never mind the entire world. And so can
you tell them a little bit about,
you know, what the show is like,
(02:28):
what there is to do if they go,
and, you know, just from there, tell us
about the the the conference.
Sure. Yeah. I I if if you've never
been to ICC before, I'd like to tell
you that it's probably a little bit different
than a lot of these sort of industry,
conferences you go to. So Mhmm. It's got
a lot more of a familiar vibe. It
it's well, it started actually in 2013. It
was actually started the year I joined the
(02:49):
company, but, hilariously, I I joined a couple
months late. So I missed the first one.
It's the only one I missed.
But yeah. No. It's,
it is
a a conference that has been growing over
the years, and it's kinda it has a
very
close knit feel to it, which is something
we've always kind of loved. It's a great
opportunity for us to just meet members of
the community and people use the software,
(03:09):
from all different parts of the industry, all
different parts of the world,
and
really kinda connect and share ideas. And so
yeah. No. There's
I wanna say it definitely started off as
just sort of like a professional sort of
conference, right, where we're talking about the software,
talking about the company, what's coming up,
over the next year, and then we have,
you know, community members come out and share
(03:30):
their ideas, share their projects they worked on
and stuff like that. And it has evolved
quite a bit. There's still that. There's still
this professional sort of aspect to it. But,
yeah,
as you could sort of alluded to earlier,
there's there's we like to have a little
bit of fun too. So,
I think one of the sort of standout
activities or or sessions, you'll you'll find at
the conference is the Buildathon,
which we've been doing for I don't know
(03:51):
how many years now. But it's,
yeah. So just just to give your your
your viewers an idea,
it's it started off as an idea of
we had two members of our company. It's
Travis Cox and Kevin McCluskey.
These are two individuals that have been using
the software for a long, long time. Very
brilliant. They do all kinds of crazy cool
stuff. They they help build customer solutions or
or they did. They do they do a
(04:11):
lot of other stuff nowadays. But, both just
like wizards with the software. And so we
thought, hey. Let's put them on the stage
and have them just try to, like, compete
against each other. And then it, like, turned
into this whole thing where we're doing, like,
on social media. It's like, oh, team Kevin,
team Travis.
And there's, like,
music videos and diss tracks being thrown around.
There's, like, props. There's costumes.
(04:33):
And and
the there's a couple of, sort of,
I guess, staples
of of the session, which would be,
one, there's usually a musical act of some
sort. I don't wanna put them on the
on on the hook for for this year,
but, it it started the first year where
there's we had our host, Kent Mills, another
another,
wonderful guy who works with the company here.
And,
(04:54):
he was sort of the acting MC,
for for the whole event. Right? So while
Kevin and Travis are kinda building you know,
I just watch people staring at a computer
for, like, forty five minutes or an hour.
It's kinda boring. Right? So so Ken's up
has, like, this tall
order of, like, entertaining the entire conference while
that's going on. So one of the things
he did is he started singing a song
and kinda got the whole crowd involved in
it. And that so then that evolved to,
(05:15):
like, oh, okay. Cool. Let's do that again.
And so we started making, like, music videos.
We put together. We call it the, the
IA, Inductive Automation Band. And so just a
bunch of employees who have some sort of
musical background, and we've made music videos. And
it's been kinda crazy. So that that's kind
of the spirit of of what the Build
a Thon is. Right? Like and then they're
always trying new stuff and always getting kind
of excited. So usually, that was one thing
(05:36):
I recommend folks check out or maybe a
reason to to kind of attend is the
sort of this, like, industry conference that has
this really fun,
lighthearted sort of,
session there. So
but, yeah. No. That's that's is that aside
from that, I mean, there's a lot of
different activities to come and check out.
Something we're doing new this year that I'm
I'm actually kinda happy to talk about,
(05:57):
is we're so we have a new room
that we're bringing to the the venue. We're
calling it the CoLab because we like it's
short collaborative
lab. Yeah. We like work we like our
wordplay.
And so we're trying to turn this room
into sort of a,
kind of a hands on sort of room.
Right? So a lot of conferences, they're very
passive. Right? Like, you're you're there. You're there
to listen. You're there to maybe converse with
(06:18):
folks if you get a chance to, but
there's usually a lot of things to watch.
Right?
But, you know, we we have this conference,
and it's about software. It's like, well, should
probably do something with the software or try
to get some more hands on time with
it. Right? Yeah. So in the collab, we're
we have two activities planned. One is the
community design challenge. And the whole point of
that is we have our instruction team who
who teach our classes, and they handle our
(06:39):
certification tests and all that fun stuff.
They're they are cooking up a bunch of
challenges
that need to be solved in Ignition. So
the idea is that they're gonna give you
a bunch of, like, very small prompts, very,
very small, like Yeah. Specifications and say, hey,
can you build a solution in Ignition that
does x y z?
And the idea is to have you do
(06:59):
within half an hour or so. We don't
want you to sit in all day feeling
like you're building a project when you're at
a conference. Right? And,
once you complete it, we'll both check you
off, and they'll add a point to your
team. And we're gonna have everyone who participates
on one of three teams. So kinda channeling
the spirit of the bill a thon. I
just talked to someone. Yeah. Yeah. And have
the community kind of work against each other
and also together, I suppose, you could say
(07:19):
when you're talking about within teams. And we'll
now see the winning team at the end
of it. We're gonna have a whole bunch
of challenges on every day so people can
come back. If they wanted, we keep kinda
showing off solutions or kind of, like, challenging
themselves. So,
really excited. It's the first time we're doing
it this year,
but hoping it it kind
of brings some very creative ideas and then
see what people can show off. Right? So
so that's one of the activities.
(07:40):
The other activity in the collab would be
the
huddles we're calling them or community huddles we're
also calling them. So,
think of, like,
a science fair.
You have a bunch of people kind of
presenting thing work they've done. Right? And then
the audience, they kinda walk around. That's kind
of the vibe we're going for. So so
the idea is to get, like, speakers who
are coming to the conference, vendors that are
(08:01):
coming,
thought leaders, people who aren't even really presenting
something, but they had something really cool that
they wanted to show off to the community.
Right? Like, they built some really cool application
that does something really neat. And then we
saw it was like, oh, that's really cool.
The idea is to have them come hang
out for an hour at a time. We'll
have a whole bunch of them in the
same again, in the collab,
and they'll just
kinda show off demo, whatever it is they
(08:22):
worked on. If they're speakers, they'll just kinda
be there to hang out and maybe talk
about their presentation. So, you know, if,
maybe you sat in on their session and
maybe you couldn't maybe you had a question
you wanted to ask, but maybe you couldn't
get into it because, you know, maybe you
ran out of time or whatever. Hey. You
can come say hi to them afterwards.
Come maybe ask a question, interact with them.
Yeah. You know, kinda you have a good
chance to kinda mingle and meet with a
(08:44):
speaker. Right? So good opportunity to sort of
meet people that you who are presenting ideas
or doing other fun stuff at the conference.
So really excited to see how that's,
gonna play out this year. So hope hope
you folks will enjoy that.
Yeah. I think go ahead. I know. No.
I was gonna say, I have more I
can cover. I just don't know if you
want me to keep going. Yeah. No. Let
me let me stop there. So Sure. You
know, for the build a thon, I remember
(09:05):
covering it the last couple of years for
the new show.
And,
you know, it just I thought it was
just so incredible. So, you know, this is
a very serious business. Industrial automation, that's you
know, I know your your stuff can be
used outside of industrial automation, but industrial automation,
it's very serious.
And when you're working with custom machine builders
or integrators, you actually can have some fun
because you get to see the vision of
(09:28):
what can be done with control systems and
how they can take a process that was
maybe costing a company money to turning it
around to being profitable.
And just I always like watching machines in
motion, you know, whether it's a bottling line
or robot arms or palletizers, depalletizers,
whatever. And, but it's just it's just it's
like it's like building, one of those Goldberg
(09:48):
machines, but that actually has a purpose
that does something positive. Right? It's not just
to be, you know, a where's the for
the eyes. It's it's actually to be something
that that changes the life and make things
possible.
And, you know, I get frustrated with some
some older folks who are like, automation is
bad as they sit there holding their smartphone,
which they live on and could not be
created without any automation. So but in any
(10:11):
case,
the HMI skate a part of our Ignition
and other packages like it. It's a place
where we can use a lot of create
creativity that we don't usually get to use
unless we're building something for a trade show.
We we get to use on the controller
side and you know? And so a lot
of times, you know, those of us who
love using those packages,
(10:31):
we like to be creative. I know at
a conference that kinda turned into a corporate
thing and then got canceled. But conference I
used to go to go to back in
the day, I would we would we would
challenge each other to build stuff and, like,
I would build video games. Right? Pong, multiplayer
Pong using a client server based system and,
you know,
you know, the interface from Star Trek or,
(10:52):
you know, Space Invaders inside of a SCADA
package. You know, I would it was just
a way to kinda let go and have
fun and, you know, talk to colleagues, and
I really, really miss those times. And so
you guys have captured that, put it in
a bottle. And I like that the Build
A Thon,
how you
invite all your integrators to kinda take part
in it. And, like, a lot of it
can be pre you know, done before the
show, and then, you know, you have your
(11:13):
finalists to actually do something at the show.
And if did that change, or is that
still the same way? It's still the same
way. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I think that's so
smart because it gets the whole community involved,
but, you know, there's not time for everybody
to do that at the show. But with
the with the collabs, I can definitely see
even end users and OEMs and other people
getting involved
where they may not be an authorized integrator,
(11:34):
but they they they are, you know, passionate
about the product, and they wanna they wanna
show off, or just have fun and and
see if they can they can build anything
in the time allotted. So I think your
guys are really capturing the spirit
and and innovation,
ingenuity of your users
and keeping that community. You said that the
the the event seems like, very friendly, like,
(11:55):
very familiar. It's probably because you, you know,
you have good customers and they keep coming
back, and they keep learning, and you're responsive
to their request. We used to follow your
your releases every or your point releases and
what you would add, and you guys are
very responsive to feedback. Again, we all know
from the product side, you can't add every
request that somebody has. Sometime just like when
(12:16):
you program in a POC, sometimes they're like,
well, can you just have it go from
there to there? That sounds so easy. It's
like,
none of the equipment can actually move from
there to there, so that's impossible. Right? So,
I really love what you guys are doing
with that. I wish more people on an
issue would do that. I just think it's
and I remember times in the past where
I was involved with things like that. It
was just so much fun, but also that
(12:37):
camaraderie you have and and, you know, just
everybody's working together to make the product better
and find new uses for the product innovate
in a ways innovative ways to use it.
So, it's pretty exciting, and I appreciate you
going over that stuff for you. Now before
we go any further, we should probably I
should probably have you tell us where it
is in the date because,
(12:58):
the last thing I wanna do is wait
till the end to say that because sometimes
people, they don't get to finish the podcast.
They get to work. They have to pause
it. Maybe they won't come back. So can
you share with us the, the date and
where it's located?
Absolutely. Yeah. So the conference opens,
Tuesday, September 16. K. In the last three
days. Right? So we'll go all the way
to Thursday.
(13:19):
And the venue is gonna be the Safe
Credit Union, which is in Sacramento, California.
This is actually pretty notable year for us
because this is the first time where we
we've gone to that venue, actually. The the
conference has always been in Folsom, California in
the Harris Center, which is a fantastic,
location, but it's, it's one of those things
where the conference has just been growing year
after year after year. It's like, alright. We
(13:39):
gotta we gotta try to find somewhere a
little bit larger to go. So really excited.
Really excited for it. That's awesome. So we've
covered those parts of the conference.
Are there other things we should talk about?
Like, are there any pre camp, people coming
in to do talks, or is there any,
like, hands on training? Or what else are
you guys doing at this conference?
Sure. Yeah. So there's gonna be
(14:01):
a large number of talks, which I'm really
excited about.
Something we've introduced in the past and I
encourage people to participate with this year is,
this table talks activity, which is if you've
ever heard of what a non conference is,
it's kind of our sort of telling of
it. But it's basically an opportunity for attendees
to sort of suggest topics
that they wanna talk about and try to
(14:21):
have, like, a targeted
group discussion. So the idea is that, you
know, people suggest ideas. Hey. I wanna talk
about x y z. I wanna talk about,
you know, UNS or, you know, whatever. Right?
Mhmm. We'll put that up on a schedule,
and then attendees will say, oh, okay. I
can go talk about that at this time.
And then it's
lightly moderated. Basically, we have someone in the
room to kinda, like, start things off, but
then the idea is to back off and
(14:42):
then and it's becoming kind of discussion. People
can kinda go wherever they want fit.
In the past, that has been sort of
the source of inspiration for future sessions that
have Okay. Have have come up at the
conference. Right? So so I highly recommend people
come check that out. Aside from that, we're
also collaborating with the private conference that actually
happened earlier this year.
I don't know if you're if you're reserved
(15:03):
familiar with it, but I'll just do, like,
a very quick overview.
So yeah. No. It's it's
the the main sort of, the interesting thing
about Pruvit is that they ask their vendors
to basically prove that their solutions work, which
is where the name Pruvit kinda comes from.
So, yeah, they they basically create
a this entire conference where they create a
virtual factory, they call it. So they have,
you know,
(15:24):
namespaces and all kind of data points that
all the vendors are supposed to connect to,
and they're supposed to, like, build a solution
that works with that virtual factory, and then
they demonstrate how it solves, you know, modern
solutions or modern or modern problems, how it
solves those. Right? So that that's kind of
the fun thing is, like, it's not just
the vendor going on stage and say, hey.
Buy my product. It's like, okay. Cool. But
(15:44):
what did it do? Like, what did you
do with it? That that's the that's the
main thing. So we're partnering with them this
year,
to basically kinda take over our old exhibitor
showcases, and they're kinda running it with their
style. We're really excited to see what they
do with it and kinda how they, you
know, sort of force the the these these
solutions to kinda, like, adhere to some standard.
So I'm gonna come check out a couple
of those talks. Right? They're gonna be, you
(16:06):
know, presentation style so you can kinda see
what's going on. But the idea is people
will kinda show off their solutions. And
and, yeah, you get to see how they
how they're supposed to work in a real
kinda, I I say real world setting, but,
obviously, it's virtual, but you get the idea.
So, yeah, I'd say that's another exciting thing
to come check out.
Yeah.
Now I know I wasn't able I'm not
able to get out there, just because of
(16:26):
the timing. But your company did say, well,
Sean, we'll give you a virtual pass so
you can share what you learn with the
audience, and I appreciate that. Thank you.
Could you describe that, though? So I've never
been to your conference virtually. So,
could you describe to our audience what that
and there may be people here on the
East Coast or down south who won't be
able to get out to the West Coast,
(16:47):
for the show. What what is the virtual
pass?
Sure. Yeah. So, you know, I'm I'm trying
to talk about all these other fun activities
that are there at the venue, but, obviously,
those those are kinda like side, you know,
sides to the main event, which would be
all of our sessions, all all of the,
all the talks we're gonna give you. Right?
So the virtual pass would would really I
like
to check out the streams that we're gonna
(17:07):
do. Right? So you'll be able to see
these sessions play out the entire conference schedule,
play out live.
It also gives you access to recordings of
them. So say for example, you know, talk
comes up at a certain time, you're busy,
you got some other stuff going on, that's
fine. You can always sign back into the
platform later on and check out the recording
much sooner than,
the videos are normally publicly available. Normally, we
make all of our conference content, like, the
(17:29):
recordings available the following year just because we
do some cleanup,
with them before we start them on our
website. So so, yeah, it's just a great
opportunity to be able to check out all
of the sessions.
And I'd say, you know, that's that's definitely
one of the main or really the one
of the few gripes I ever kinda hear
about the conference is that there's too much
to do. Like, there's too many talks going
on, so people can't do everything, which is
true for a lot of conferences. You know
what I mean? I got I'm gonna do
(17:49):
it in so many places. So, yeah, the
that pass is a great way to make
sure you're able to to to see all
the different talks. So
Yeah. I think that that is there's always
it's, you could spend hours at some of
these conferences prior to the conferences
trying to map out the perfect
the perfect. And then it gets blown up
when you see somebody in the hallway in
between sessions, and you're like,
(18:10):
I'm gonna miss what I you know, my
main thing. But, anyways yeah. Yeah. So no.
That's good. That's very good. And, so if
anybody if especially if you're using the product
or looking at using the product
and you really wanna get up to speed
to learn more, find out what's happening in
the community,
that's a good alternative.
And if the boss won't let you out
of work, at least you can catch the
replays afterwards
(18:31):
and, which is which is great, you know,
and you still can feel like you're you
came up to speed, you know, without having
to take a flight out there, which it
would be better that, like,
obviously, to do everything in person. But, sometimes,
especially end users, they just it's hard to
get out of the plant. You know? And
I shouldn't say just that. End users, oh,
yeah. It's integrated.
It can be it can be difficult to
(18:51):
to travel halfway across the country and, you
know, get that approved. But, hopefully hopefully, you'll
have a lot of people from the East
Coast representing
representing us. And, in any case so it
just sounds like a great time. Sounds like
a fun time. It's coming up quick, so
the people interested should try to sign up
soon.
What else do should we talk about about
(19:11):
the conference?
Well, you know, you you mentioned a little
bit earlier,
about sort of, the creativity of folks in
this space. You you kinda Yeah. You kinda
talk about making video games and stuff like
that in in different systems. It's kinda funny
you mentioned that because one of the other
activities we have is our we call it
our SCADA arcade.
So this Really? Yeah. So this this started
off as, like, a project in our tech
support division as sort of, like, a
(19:32):
product knowledge development program where it's like, hey.
Make a video game in Ignition. Right? Which
which is a little challenging because it's not
you know, it doesn't have a lot of
tools you'd find in, like, a modern, like,
game engine. But, like, you know, that's that's
engineers do great with with challenges like that,
right, which is, I I think, kinda to
your point. So, yeah, we're
so, you know, in the past, we've basically
brought these games that our support engineers have
(19:52):
worked on just so people can check it
out. This year, we're returning to a larger
room. We're gonna try to have some some
physical games there too so people can kinda
play around and check it out. But, yeah,
so that's making a return. That that ended
up being kind of a fan favorite,
that that came out there. And then, I
would also say, something else we're doing this
year is, we're creating a room called The
Hub.
So one of the things we found it's
(20:12):
kind of funny running a a conference. This
is something I didn't really realize, but, there's
just a lot going on. And it turns
out a lot of the attendees might wanna
actually chat with someone. From Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
And, it's really hard when, like, you know,
a good chunk of of your company is
also running around, like, helping, facilitate the,
the the conference. So we decided, alright. Let's
make a little room where we're just gonna
have people from different teams, you know, so,
(20:34):
like, our support
division or sales engineering, stuff like that. If
you wanted to go talk to them or
ask some questions.
We'll even have our product managers from software
engineering. So if you wanted to, like, you
know, mention, like, pinpoints or suggestions for ideas,
there will be people there that you can
kinda just chat and say hi. So,
definitely
recommend checking that out too. Just it's a
good way to kind of interact with the
company. And I I think that's something that
(20:56):
maybe
a lot of your audience, a lot of
attendees maybe don't really realize that the conference
is kind of a selfish thing for us
because it's a good opportunity for us to,
like, talk
to the folks that use the conference. That
ends up being a huge draw for us.
We we have
a really strong community
around the software. Right? And we we feel
very blessed with it, you know, because there's
(21:17):
a lot of organizations out there that,
you know, people have some not so nice
things to say about the company for one
reason or another. Right? But it it seems
like we have some some really true true
fans.
So
the conference is a is a fantastic time
for us to
really make sure we're still connected
to those folks where we're still interacting. Like,
you you sort of commented a little bit
about us, like, reaching out to
(21:39):
our community and interact with them. And so
this is that's really where that's really why
we're here doing it every year is just
we just like chatting with people and and
throwing a little party where you can come
and tell us what they're working on. And
and,
it it it it it honestly, it motivates
a lot of folks at the company. It
also is a great introduction for a lot
of folks because it's
maybe one of the things that's a little
(22:00):
less obvious, but maybe maybe once you think
about it, it makes sense, is that, you
know, we we're a software company, which I
know that seems kinda weird for me to
say. But we're we're definitely, like, kind of
we're sort of like a step removed from
the people that are using the software. Right?
Like, we're kind of a step at least
a step or two away from from integration
companies. Right? So the conference is a great
way to say, hey.
Come talk to these end users. Come talk
(22:20):
to these integrators. See what they do with
our software. Yeah. Right? Because that's something that's
a little bit harder to capture,
on their own at at IA. So we
we like to make sure we're talking with
community members and sort of exposing them to,
hey. Here's what our users are doing. Here
here's here's how the product actually gets used.
So Yeah. That's that's a huge hugely important
thing or aspect of the conference, I should
say.
Yeah. I mean, I I think, over the
(22:42):
years, one of the one of the bad
trends we've seen, I think we're all signed
to realize this. You know, they say twenty
twenty is hindsight is twenty twenty,
is that, you're not as you're not as
efficient
or you can be super efficient when you're
conversing with people, when you're talking to people,
when you're,
in even in person. Right? That's even better.
(23:02):
And a lot of people, because of everything
we've been through, doing everything remote or but
you don't you don't get to see the
inflections. You don't get to understand. You know?
And when you're when you're not not at
a conference, you don't usually have the time
to really get into things on a deeper
level. So there's a lot of advantages. I
know I I've been doing this for thirty
five years. I still learn new things talking
(23:23):
to my students and talking to the vendors
that come on. I'm learning stuff every day.
And, if I if I just sat, read
a book, and just sat and film videos,
I would there must be so much I
would never have learned.
And because every every every human being is
not all unique, but they're in unique situations.
And so for a vendor like yourself, I
indefinitely see, you know, a conference like this,
(23:44):
your customers are bringing you things
that you've never thought of a certain way
because you've never been in that situation. So
it's huge that you guys are doing this.
Again, I recommend all vendors do something like
this, but, I'm glad you guys are doing
it. And, and I I think that's probably
why you have a very loyal customer base.
And, I, you know, I just wanna throw
out there one thing too. Anybody who who
(24:05):
is not a gamer, they do make,
I actually built my own arcade machine, and
they do make USB
to arcade controls. So
don't poo poo it. You can actually take
your favorite software package to make pong. Right?
Anybody can do that, and, you can wire
it to real arcade controls very simply and
(24:25):
easily through, through a USB blob, block. So
and it's a lot of fun a lot
of fun to do that too. So in
any
case,
with that and, again, we know your your
there's a maker version of your software. We
covered that in our first episode.
And, so, you know, people can play with
it if they want after hours and learn
it as well. But in any case,
(24:46):
so I'm looking forward to it already, even
though I'm only gonna be attending virtually.
Is there anything else we should cover in
this episode about the conference itself or the
company?
Yeah. I I I like to tell folks.
I mean, there's a lot to check out,
and I I'm obviously very I have some
bias, and I'm very excited about a lot
of things going on there.
But, you know, if if you can only,
like, check out a few things, I'd I'd
(25:07):
I would like to just kinda point out
that we do have our
two other keynotes that that we we have.
So we have our main keynote and our
technical keynote. And those are always usually very
forward
facing, forward thinking. So we kinda, like, talk
a little bit about, you know, changes of
the company, where the company is going, as
well as the software. Right? Which which I
think is what ends up pulling a lot
of folks. Right? So it's a it's a
conference for a piece of software. You figure
(25:29):
go figure the the talk where we we
we we we explore the future of the
software ends up being the most popular one.
So yeah. If if, you know, end up
not being able to attend, that's totally okay.
Maybe we'll catch it in future use. But,
yeah, once those recordings available, always recommend folks
maybe check out those keynotes just because it
can kind of kind of give you a
little bit of insight of what we're trying
to do and where we're going. So,
but, yeah, no. I hope hope to continue
(25:49):
to grow. Hope hope maybe we can get
you out here on these times. I know,
obviously, scheduling's the the challenge, but love to
love to have you come out, Sean, sometime
for sure. Yeah. I know I would enjoy.
I know it would be a blast. And
and I just wanna say out to the
audience too, they do a great job of
putting the point releases up like I've covered
in my shows.
And and really, they do a good and
they do a lot of tongue and cheek
with it too, which just makes it fun
(26:09):
to read as well. But you can always
see, and they they in those even in
their regular point releases, they're talking about things
they wanna do, things that were customer suggestions,
things they're working on. So just kudos to
the company for being so forward and transparent
and really putting their customers first. And,
yeah, I just I just was always impressed
with those things. And, Paul, I just wanna
(26:31):
thank you for coming on. What I'll do
is just so the audience knows, we're gonna
fill the, description with the important links so
that you can either get your in person
pass or you can get your virtual pass
and, any other important links we think need
to be in there so you guys don't
have to go search in the web or
click, and they'll be right there in the,
description. I do wanna thank Inductive for making
(26:51):
this episode ad free.
We really appreciate it. So all that they've
they've covered our cost to edit the episode
and publish it so you guys are are
enjoying it. So, Paul, thank your company for
that, and, and, thank you for coming on
the show. I really appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks
for having me, Sean. This is a lot
of fun. Well, I hope you enjoyed that
episode, and I wanna thank Paul for coming
on the show and bringing us up to
speed on the Ignition Community Conference.
(27:12):
Really appreciate him coming on and sharing all
those stories and all that information. And I
wanna thank Inductive too for sponsoring the episode
so we could bring you the audio and
video completely ad free. That said, don't forget
all the links are in the description. And
if you do use or are thinking about
using,
Ignition, then definitely consider going. I also was
given a free pass to attend the virtual
(27:34):
event, so I'll try to get you guys
reporting on that as the event is ongoing.
Now with all that said, I do wanna
thank you all for tuning back in this
week. Please share the podcast with other people.
It really helps
us find new vendors to come on the
show or maybe new product managers at existing
vendors that we haven't really hooked up with.
So I really appreciate when you guys share
(27:55):
the show out there. Let the vendors know
you're watching and listening. Or if you're a
vendor, let your colleagues know that it's worth
coming on the show because you get in
front of this great audience. And with that
said, I wanna wish you, my great audience,
good health and happiness. And until next time,
my friends,
peace.
Hey, everybody. Thank you for tuning back in.
It's Sean here from Insights and Automation. And
in this episode of the automation podcast,
I meet up with Paul Scott from Inductive
Automation
to learn all about the Ignition Community Conference.
Now if you're like me and you like
going to these things, meeting other users and
learning what's new
and coming out for the product, then I
(00:21):
think you'll enjoy this episode. And, you know,
if you use Ignition or you're thinking about
using it, you really should consider looking into
the community conference because it's a unique once
a year event that,
really allows you to get a look at
the not only the product, but their partners
and talk to other users of the software.
Now if you are interested, I'm gonna include
(00:42):
all the top links in the description in
the show notes so you'll have them on
whatever platform you're viewing or listening on. And
I also wanna thank Inductive for sponsoring this
episode so it would be ad free, both
the video and audio editions. So thank you
very much to them because we always like
it when it's ad free. Right? With that
said, let's go ahead and jump into this
(01:03):
week's episode of the automation podcast and learn
all about the Ignition Community Conference. I wanna
welcome to the show Paul
from Inductive. I'm so excited to have you
guys on. This is the third appearance from
somebody from Inductive on the show. And, before
we start talking about the upcoming conference, which
I've covered in years past,
before we start covering that, could you introduce
(01:25):
yourself to our audience?
Sure thing. Yeah. Thanks, Sean. Happy to be
here. So, yeah, my name is Paul Scott.
I joined Inductive Automation in 2013 as a
tech support rep.
And then I, a couple years later, switched
over to an instructor role, which sort of
got me into documentation, which is where I
currently am right now. I oversee our technical
documentation as well as, our video library, Inductive
University.
(01:46):
I like to tell people that's my day
job. The reason I'm here today,
is, because of the conference. So I also
help out with managing content for our annual
conference, the Ignition Community Conference or ICC, as
you'll you'll only say a whole lot. So
yeah.
That's cool. And now I've covered it in
the past. You guys do so much cool
stuff, but I don't you know, because it's,
(02:07):
you know, I think a lot of the
audience have been to, you know, maybe more
regional shows they may not be as familiar
with. You know? What we find a lot
in our industry is a lot of people
don't get to travel
to every show. There's so many that go
on through at least just even North America,
never mind the entire world. And so can
you tell them a little bit about,
you know, what the show is like,
(02:28):
what there is to do if they go,
and, you know, just from there, tell us
about the the the conference.
Sure. Yeah. I I if if you've never
been to ICC before, I'd like to tell
you that it's probably a little bit different
than a lot of these sort of industry,
conferences you go to. So Mhmm. It's got
a lot more of a familiar vibe. It
it's well, it started actually in 2013. It
was actually started the year I joined the
(02:49):
company, but, hilariously, I I joined a couple
months late. So I missed the first one.
It's the only one I missed.
But yeah. No. It's,
it is
a a conference that has been growing over
the years, and it's kinda it has a
very
close knit feel to it, which is something
we've always kind of loved. It's a great
opportunity for us to just meet members of
the community and people use the software,
(03:09):
from all different parts of the industry, all
different parts of the world,
and
really kinda connect and share ideas. And so
yeah. No. There's
I wanna say it definitely started off as
just sort of like a professional sort of
conference, right, where we're talking about the software,
talking about the company, what's coming up,
over the next year, and then we have,
you know, community members come out and share
(03:30):
their ideas, share their projects they worked on
and stuff like that. And it has evolved
quite a bit. There's still that. There's still
this professional sort of aspect to it. But,
yeah,
as you could sort of alluded to earlier,
there's there's we like to have a little
bit of fun too. So,
I think one of the sort of standout
activities or or sessions, you'll you'll find at
the conference is the Buildathon,
which we've been doing for I don't know
(03:51):
how many years now. But it's,
yeah. So just just to give your your
your viewers an idea,
it's it started off as an idea of
we had two members of our company. It's
Travis Cox and Kevin McCluskey.
These are two individuals that have been using
the software for a long, long time. Very
brilliant. They do all kinds of crazy cool
stuff. They they help build customer solutions or
or they did. They do they do a
(04:11):
lot of other stuff nowadays. But, both just
like wizards with the software. And so we
thought, hey. Let's put them on the stage
and have them just try to, like, compete
against each other. And then it, like, turned
into this whole thing where we're doing, like,
on social media. It's like, oh, team Kevin,
team Travis.
And there's, like,
music videos and diss tracks being thrown around.
There's, like, props. There's costumes.
(04:33):
And and
the there's a couple of, sort of,
I guess, staples
of of the session, which would be,
one, there's usually a musical act of some
sort. I don't wanna put them on the
on on the hook for for this year,
but, it it started the first year where
there's we had our host, Kent Mills, another
another,
wonderful guy who works with the company here.
And,
(04:54):
he was sort of the acting MC,
for for the whole event. Right? So while
Kevin and Travis are kinda building you know,
I just watch people staring at a computer
for, like, forty five minutes or an hour.
It's kinda boring. Right? So so Ken's up
has, like, this tall
order of, like, entertaining the entire conference while
that's going on. So one of the things
he did is he started singing a song
and kinda got the whole crowd involved in
it. And that so then that evolved to,
(05:15):
like, oh, okay. Cool. Let's do that again.
And so we started making, like, music videos.
We put together. We call it the, the
IA, Inductive Automation Band. And so just a
bunch of employees who have some sort of
musical background, and we've made music videos. And
it's been kinda crazy. So that that's kind
of the spirit of of what the Build
a Thon is. Right? Like and then they're
always trying new stuff and always getting kind
of excited. So usually, that was one thing
(05:36):
I recommend folks check out or maybe a
reason to to kind of attend is the
sort of this, like, industry conference that has
this really fun,
lighthearted sort of,
session there. So
but, yeah. No. That's that's is that aside
from that, I mean, there's a lot of
different activities to come and check out.
Something we're doing new this year that I'm
I'm actually kinda happy to talk about,
(05:57):
is we're so we have a new room
that we're bringing to the the venue. We're
calling it the CoLab because we like it's
short collaborative
lab. Yeah. We like work we like our
wordplay.
And so we're trying to turn this room
into sort of a,
kind of a hands on sort of room.
Right? So a lot of conferences, they're very
passive. Right? Like, you're you're there. You're there
to listen. You're there to maybe converse with
(06:18):
folks if you get a chance to, but
there's usually a lot of things to watch.
Right?
But, you know, we we have this conference,
and it's about software. It's like, well, should
probably do something with the software or try
to get some more hands on time with
it. Right? Yeah. So in the collab, we're
we have two activities planned. One is the
community design challenge. And the whole point of
that is we have our instruction team who
who teach our classes, and they handle our
(06:39):
certification tests and all that fun stuff.
They're they are cooking up a bunch of
challenges
that need to be solved in Ignition. So
the idea is that they're gonna give you
a bunch of, like, very small prompts, very,
very small, like Yeah. Specifications and say, hey,
can you build a solution in Ignition that
does x y z?
And the idea is to have you do
(06:59):
within half an hour or so. We don't
want you to sit in all day feeling
like you're building a project when you're at
a conference. Right? And,
once you complete it, we'll both check you
off, and they'll add a point to your
team. And we're gonna have everyone who participates
on one of three teams. So kinda channeling
the spirit of the bill a thon. I
just talked to someone. Yeah. Yeah. And have
the community kind of work against each other
and also together, I suppose, you could say
(07:19):
when you're talking about within teams. And we'll
now see the winning team at the end
of it. We're gonna have a whole bunch
of challenges on every day so people can
come back. If they wanted, we keep kinda
showing off solutions or kind of, like, challenging
themselves. So,
really excited. It's the first time we're doing
it this year,
but hoping it it kind
of brings some very creative ideas and then
see what people can show off. Right? So
so that's one of the activities.
(07:40):
The other activity in the collab would be
the
huddles we're calling them or community huddles we're
also calling them. So,
think of, like,
a science fair.
You have a bunch of people kind of
presenting thing work they've done. Right? And then
the audience, they kinda walk around. That's kind
of the vibe we're going for. So so
the idea is to get, like, speakers who
are coming to the conference, vendors that are
(08:01):
coming,
thought leaders, people who aren't even really presenting
something, but they had something really cool that
they wanted to show off to the community.
Right? Like, they built some really cool application
that does something really neat. And then we
saw it was like, oh, that's really cool.
The idea is to have them come hang
out for an hour at a time. We'll
have a whole bunch of them in the
same again, in the collab,
and they'll just
kinda show off demo, whatever it is they
(08:22):
worked on. If they're speakers, they'll just kinda
be there to hang out and maybe talk
about their presentation. So, you know, if,
maybe you sat in on their session and
maybe you couldn't maybe you had a question
you wanted to ask, but maybe you couldn't
get into it because, you know, maybe you
ran out of time or whatever. Hey. You
can come say hi to them afterwards.
Come maybe ask a question, interact with them.
Yeah. You know, kinda you have a good
chance to kinda mingle and meet with a
(08:44):
speaker. Right? So good opportunity to sort of
meet people that you who are presenting ideas
or doing other fun stuff at the conference.
So really excited to see how that's,
gonna play out this year. So hope hope
you folks will enjoy that.
Yeah. I think go ahead. I know. No.
I was gonna say, I have more I
can cover. I just don't know if you
want me to keep going. Yeah. No. Let
me let me stop there. So Sure. You
know, for the build a thon, I remember
(09:05):
covering it the last couple of years for
the new show.
And,
you know, it just I thought it was
just so incredible. So, you know, this is
a very serious business. Industrial automation, that's you
know, I know your your stuff can be
used outside of industrial automation, but industrial automation,
it's very serious.
And when you're working with custom machine builders
or integrators, you actually can have some fun
because you get to see the vision of
(09:28):
what can be done with control systems and
how they can take a process that was
maybe costing a company money to turning it
around to being profitable.
And just I always like watching machines in
motion, you know, whether it's a bottling line
or robot arms or palletizers, depalletizers,
whatever. And, but it's just it's just it's
like it's like building, one of those Goldberg
(09:48):
machines, but that actually has a purpose
that does something positive. Right? It's not just
to be, you know, a where's the for
the eyes. It's it's actually to be something
that that changes the life and make things
possible.
And, you know, I get frustrated with some
some older folks who are like, automation is
bad as they sit there holding their smartphone,
which they live on and could not be
created without any automation. So but in any
(10:11):
case,
the HMI skate a part of our Ignition
and other packages like it. It's a place
where we can use a lot of create
creativity that we don't usually get to use
unless we're building something for a trade show.
We we get to use on the controller
side and you know? And so a lot
of times, you know, those of us who
love using those packages,
(10:31):
we like to be creative. I know at
a conference that kinda turned into a corporate
thing and then got canceled. But conference I
used to go to go to back in
the day, I would we would we would
challenge each other to build stuff and, like,
I would build video games. Right? Pong, multiplayer
Pong using a client server based system and,
you know,
you know, the interface from Star Trek or,
(10:52):
you know, Space Invaders inside of a SCADA
package. You know, I would it was just
a way to kinda let go and have
fun and, you know, talk to colleagues, and
I really, really miss those times. And so
you guys have captured that, put it in
a bottle. And I like that the Build
A Thon,
how you
invite all your integrators to kinda take part
in it. And, like, a lot of it
can be pre you know, done before the
show, and then, you know, you have your
(11:13):
finalists to actually do something at the show.
And if did that change, or is that
still the same way? It's still the same
way. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I think that's so
smart because it gets the whole community involved,
but, you know, there's not time for everybody
to do that at the show. But with
the with the collabs, I can definitely see
even end users and OEMs and other people
getting involved
where they may not be an authorized integrator,
(11:34):
but they they they are, you know, passionate
about the product, and they wanna they wanna
show off, or just have fun and and
see if they can they can build anything
in the time allotted. So I think your
guys are really capturing the spirit
and and innovation,
ingenuity of your users
and keeping that community. You said that the
the the event seems like, very friendly, like,
(11:55):
very familiar. It's probably because you, you know,
you have good customers and they keep coming
back, and they keep learning, and you're responsive
to their request. We used to follow your
your releases every or your point releases and
what you would add, and you guys are
very responsive to feedback. Again, we all know
from the product side, you can't add every
request that somebody has. Sometime just like when
(12:16):
you program in a POC, sometimes they're like,
well, can you just have it go from
there to there? That sounds so easy. It's
like,
none of the equipment can actually move from
there to there, so that's impossible. Right? So,
I really love what you guys are doing
with that. I wish more people on an
issue would do that. I just think it's
and I remember times in the past where
I was involved with things like that. It
was just so much fun, but also that
(12:37):
camaraderie you have and and, you know, just
everybody's working together to make the product better
and find new uses for the product innovate
in a ways innovative ways to use it.
So, it's pretty exciting, and I appreciate you
going over that stuff for you. Now before
we go any further, we should probably I
should probably have you tell us where it
is in the date because,
(12:58):
the last thing I wanna do is wait
till the end to say that because sometimes
people, they don't get to finish the podcast.
They get to work. They have to pause
it. Maybe they won't come back. So can
you share with us the, the date and
where it's located?
Absolutely. Yeah. So the conference opens,
Tuesday, September 16. K. In the last three
days. Right? So we'll go all the way
to Thursday.
(13:19):
And the venue is gonna be the Safe
Credit Union, which is in Sacramento, California.
This is actually pretty notable year for us
because this is the first time where we
we've gone to that venue, actually. The the
conference has always been in Folsom, California in
the Harris Center, which is a fantastic,
location, but it's, it's one of those things
where the conference has just been growing year
after year after year. It's like, alright. We
(13:39):
gotta we gotta try to find somewhere a
little bit larger to go. So really excited.
Really excited for it. That's awesome. So we've
covered those parts of the conference.
Are there other things we should talk about?
Like, are there any pre camp, people coming
in to do talks, or is there any,
like, hands on training? Or what else are
you guys doing at this conference?
Sure. Yeah. So there's gonna be
(14:01):
a large number of talks, which I'm really
excited about.
Something we've introduced in the past and I
encourage people to participate with this year is,
this table talks activity, which is if you've
ever heard of what a non conference is,
it's kind of our sort of telling of
it. But it's basically an opportunity for attendees
to sort of suggest topics
that they wanna talk about and try to
(14:21):
have, like, a targeted
group discussion. So the idea is that, you
know, people suggest ideas. Hey. I wanna talk
about x y z. I wanna talk about,
you know, UNS or, you know, whatever. Right?
Mhmm. We'll put that up on a schedule,
and then attendees will say, oh, okay. I
can go talk about that at this time.
And then it's
lightly moderated. Basically, we have someone in the
room to kinda, like, start things off, but
then the idea is to back off and
(14:42):
then and it's becoming kind of discussion. People
can kinda go wherever they want fit.
In the past, that has been sort of
the source of inspiration for future sessions that
have Okay. Have have come up at the
conference. Right? So so I highly recommend people
come check that out. Aside from that, we're
also collaborating with the private conference that actually
happened earlier this year.
I don't know if you're if you're reserved
(15:03):
familiar with it, but I'll just do, like,
a very quick overview.
So yeah. No. It's it's
the the main sort of, the interesting thing
about Pruvit is that they ask their vendors
to basically prove that their solutions work, which
is where the name Pruvit kinda comes from.
So, yeah, they they basically create
a this entire conference where they create a
virtual factory, they call it. So they have,
you know,
(15:24):
namespaces and all kind of data points that
all the vendors are supposed to connect to,
and they're supposed to, like, build a solution
that works with that virtual factory, and then
they demonstrate how it solves, you know, modern
solutions or modern or modern problems, how it
solves those. Right? So that that's kind of
the fun thing is, like, it's not just
the vendor going on stage and say, hey.
Buy my product. It's like, okay. Cool. But
(15:44):
what did it do? Like, what did you
do with it? That that's the that's the
main thing. So we're partnering with them this
year,
to basically kinda take over our old exhibitor
showcases, and they're kinda running it with their
style. We're really excited to see what they
do with it and kinda how they, you
know, sort of force the the these these
solutions to kinda, like, adhere to some standard.
So I'm gonna come check out a couple
of those talks. Right? They're gonna be, you
(16:06):
know, presentation style so you can kinda see
what's going on. But the idea is people
will kinda show off their solutions. And
and, yeah, you get to see how they
how they're supposed to work in a real
kinda, I I say real world setting, but,
obviously, it's virtual, but you get the idea.
So, yeah, I'd say that's another exciting thing
to come check out.
Yeah.
Now I know I wasn't able I'm not
able to get out there, just because of
(16:26):
the timing. But your company did say, well,
Sean, we'll give you a virtual pass so
you can share what you learn with the
audience, and I appreciate that. Thank you.
Could you describe that, though? So I've never
been to your conference virtually. So,
could you describe to our audience what that
and there may be people here on the
East Coast or down south who won't be
able to get out to the West Coast,
(16:47):
for the show. What what is the virtual
pass?
Sure. Yeah. So, you know, I'm I'm trying
to talk about all these other fun activities
that are there at the venue, but, obviously,
those those are kinda like side, you know,
sides to the main event, which would be
all of our sessions, all all of the,
all the talks we're gonna give you. Right?
So the virtual pass would would really I
like
to check out the streams that we're gonna
(17:07):
do. Right? So you'll be able to see
these sessions play out the entire conference schedule,
play out live.
It also gives you access to recordings of
them. So say for example, you know, talk
comes up at a certain time, you're busy,
you got some other stuff going on, that's
fine. You can always sign back into the
platform later on and check out the recording
much sooner than,
the videos are normally publicly available. Normally, we
make all of our conference content, like, the
(17:29):
recordings available the following year just because we
do some cleanup,
with them before we start them on our
website. So so, yeah, it's just a great
opportunity to be able to check out all
of the sessions.
And I'd say, you know, that's that's definitely
one of the main or really the one
of the few gripes I ever kinda hear
about the conference is that there's too much
to do. Like, there's too many talks going
on, so people can't do everything, which is
true for a lot of conferences. You know
what I mean? I got I'm gonna do
(17:49):
it in so many places. So, yeah, the
that pass is a great way to make
sure you're able to to to see all
the different talks. So
Yeah. I think that that is there's always
it's, you could spend hours at some of
these conferences prior to the conferences
trying to map out the perfect
the perfect. And then it gets blown up
when you see somebody in the hallway in
between sessions, and you're like,
(18:10):
I'm gonna miss what I you know, my
main thing. But, anyways yeah. Yeah. So no.
That's good. That's very good. And, so if
anybody if especially if you're using the product
or looking at using the product
and you really wanna get up to speed
to learn more, find out what's happening in
the community,
that's a good alternative.
And if the boss won't let you out
of work, at least you can catch the
replays afterwards
(18:31):
and, which is which is great, you know,
and you still can feel like you're you
came up to speed, you know, without having
to take a flight out there, which it
would be better that, like,
obviously, to do everything in person. But, sometimes,
especially end users, they just it's hard to
get out of the plant. You know? And
I shouldn't say just that. End users, oh,
yeah. It's integrated.
It can be it can be difficult to
(18:51):
to travel halfway across the country and, you
know, get that approved. But, hopefully hopefully, you'll
have a lot of people from the East
Coast representing
representing us. And, in any case so it
just sounds like a great time. Sounds like
a fun time. It's coming up quick, so
the people interested should try to sign up
soon.
What else do should we talk about about
(19:11):
the conference?
Well, you know, you you mentioned a little
bit earlier,
about sort of, the creativity of folks in
this space. You you kinda Yeah. You kinda
talk about making video games and stuff like
that in in different systems. It's kinda funny
you mentioned that because one of the other
activities we have is our we call it
our SCADA arcade.
So this Really? Yeah. So this this started
off as, like, a project in our tech
support division as sort of, like, a
(19:32):
product knowledge development program where it's like, hey.
Make a video game in Ignition. Right? Which
which is a little challenging because it's not
you know, it doesn't have a lot of
tools you'd find in, like, a modern, like,
game engine. But, like, you know, that's that's
engineers do great with with challenges like that,
right, which is, I I think, kinda to
your point. So, yeah, we're
so, you know, in the past, we've basically
brought these games that our support engineers have
(19:52):
worked on just so people can check it
out. This year, we're returning to a larger
room. We're gonna try to have some some
physical games there too so people can kinda
play around and check it out. But, yeah,
so that's making a return. That that ended
up being kind of a fan favorite,
that that came out there. And then, I
would also say, something else we're doing this
year is, we're creating a room called The
Hub.
So one of the things we found it's
(20:12):
kind of funny running a a conference. This
is something I didn't really realize, but, there's
just a lot going on. And it turns
out a lot of the attendees might wanna
actually chat with someone. From Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
And, it's really hard when, like, you know,
a good chunk of of your company is
also running around, like, helping, facilitate the,
the the conference. So we decided, alright. Let's
make a little room where we're just gonna
have people from different teams, you know, so,
(20:34):
like, our support
division or sales engineering, stuff like that. If
you wanted to go talk to them or
ask some questions.
We'll even have our product managers from software
engineering. So if you wanted to, like, you
know, mention, like, pinpoints or suggestions for ideas,
there will be people there that you can
kinda just chat and say hi. So,
definitely
recommend checking that out too. Just it's a
good way to kind of interact with the
company. And I I think that's something that
(20:56):
maybe
a lot of your audience, a lot of
attendees maybe don't really realize that the conference
is kind of a selfish thing for us
because it's a good opportunity for us to,
like, talk
to the folks that use the conference. That
ends up being a huge draw for us.
We we have
a really strong community
around the software. Right? And we we feel
very blessed with it, you know, because there's
(21:17):
a lot of organizations out there that,
you know, people have some not so nice
things to say about the company for one
reason or another. Right? But it it seems
like we have some some really true true
fans.
So
the conference is a is a fantastic time
for us to
really make sure we're still connected
to those folks where we're still interacting. Like,
you you sort of commented a little bit
about us, like, reaching out to
(21:39):
our community and interact with them. And so
this is that's really where that's really why
we're here doing it every year is just
we just like chatting with people and and
throwing a little party where you can come
and tell us what they're working on. And
and,
it it it it it honestly, it motivates
a lot of folks at the company. It
also is a great introduction for a lot
of folks because it's
maybe one of the things that's a little
(22:00):
less obvious, but maybe maybe once you think
about it, it makes sense, is that, you
know, we we're a software company, which I
know that seems kinda weird for me to
say. But we're we're definitely, like, kind of
we're sort of like a step removed from
the people that are using the software. Right?
Like, we're kind of a step at least
a step or two away from from integration
companies. Right? So the conference is a great
way to say, hey.
Come talk to these end users. Come talk
(22:20):
to these integrators. See what they do with
our software. Yeah. Right? Because that's something that's
a little bit harder to capture,
on their own at at IA. So we
we like to make sure we're talking with
community members and sort of exposing them to,
hey. Here's what our users are doing. Here
here's here's how the product actually gets used.
So Yeah. That's that's a huge hugely important
thing or aspect of the conference, I should
say.
Yeah. I mean, I I think, over the
(22:42):
years, one of the one of the bad
trends we've seen, I think we're all signed
to realize this. You know, they say twenty
twenty is hindsight is twenty twenty,
is that, you're not as you're not as
efficient
or you can be super efficient when you're
conversing with people, when you're talking to people,
when you're,
in even in person. Right? That's even better.
(23:02):
And a lot of people, because of everything
we've been through, doing everything remote or but
you don't you don't get to see the
inflections. You don't get to understand. You know?
And when you're when you're not not at
a conference, you don't usually have the time
to really get into things on a deeper
level. So there's a lot of advantages. I
know I I've been doing this for thirty
five years. I still learn new things talking
(23:23):
to my students and talking to the vendors
that come on. I'm learning stuff every day.
And, if I if I just sat, read
a book, and just sat and film videos,
I would there must be so much I
would never have learned.
And because every every every human being is
not all unique, but they're in unique situations.
And so for a vendor like yourself, I
indefinitely see, you know, a conference like this,
(23:44):
your customers are bringing you things
that you've never thought of a certain way
because you've never been in that situation. So
it's huge that you guys are doing this.
Again, I recommend all vendors do something like
this, but, I'm glad you guys are doing
it. And, and I I think that's probably
why you have a very loyal customer base.
And, I, you know, I just wanna throw
out there one thing too. Anybody who who
(24:05):
is not a gamer, they do make,
I actually built my own arcade machine, and
they do make USB
to arcade controls. So
don't poo poo it. You can actually take
your favorite software package to make pong. Right?
Anybody can do that, and, you can wire
it to real arcade controls very simply and
(24:25):
easily through, through a USB blob, block. So
and it's a lot of fun a lot
of fun to do that too. So in
any
case,
with that and, again, we know your your
there's a maker version of your software. We
covered that in our first episode.
And, so, you know, people can play with
it if they want after hours and learn
it as well. But in any case,
(24:46):
so I'm looking forward to it already, even
though I'm only gonna be attending virtually.
Is there anything else we should cover in
this episode about the conference itself or the
company?
Yeah. I I I like to tell folks.
I mean, there's a lot to check out,
and I I'm obviously very I have some
bias, and I'm very excited about a lot
of things going on there.
But, you know, if if you can only,
like, check out a few things, I'd I'd
(25:07):
I would like to just kinda point out
that we do have our
two other keynotes that that we we have.
So we have our main keynote and our
technical keynote. And those are always usually very
forward
facing, forward thinking. So we kinda, like, talk
a little bit about, you know, changes of
the company, where the company is going, as
well as the software. Right? Which which I
think is what ends up pulling a lot
of folks. Right? So it's a it's a
conference for a piece of software. You figure
(25:29):
go figure the the talk where we we
we we we explore the future of the
software ends up being the most popular one.
So yeah. If if, you know, end up
not being able to attend, that's totally okay.
Maybe we'll catch it in future use. But,
yeah, once those recordings available, always recommend folks
maybe check out those keynotes just because it
can kind of kind of give you a
little bit of insight of what we're trying
to do and where we're going. So,
but, yeah, no. I hope hope to continue
(25:49):
to grow. Hope hope maybe we can get
you out here on these times. I know,
obviously, scheduling's the the challenge, but love to
love to have you come out, Sean, sometime
for sure. Yeah. I know I would enjoy.
I know it would be a blast. And
and I just wanna say out to the
audience too, they do a great job of
putting the point releases up like I've covered
in my shows.
And and really, they do a good and
they do a lot of tongue and cheek
with it too, which just makes it fun
(26:09):
to read as well. But you can always
see, and they they in those even in
their regular point releases, they're talking about things
they wanna do, things that were customer suggestions,
things they're working on. So just kudos to
the company for being so forward and transparent
and really putting their customers first. And,
yeah, I just I just was always impressed
with those things. And, Paul, I just wanna
(26:31):
thank you for coming on. What I'll do
is just so the audience knows, we're gonna
fill the, description with the important links so
that you can either get your in person
pass or you can get your virtual pass
and, any other important links we think need
to be in there so you guys don't
have to go search in the web or
click, and they'll be right there in the,
description. I do wanna thank Inductive for making
(26:51):
this episode ad free.
We really appreciate it. So all that they've
they've covered our cost to edit the episode
and publish it so you guys are are
enjoying it. So, Paul, thank your company for
that, and, and, thank you for coming on
the show. I really appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks
for having me, Sean. This is a lot
of fun. Well, I hope you enjoyed that
episode, and I wanna thank Paul for coming
on the show and bringing us up to
speed on the Ignition Community Conference.
(27:12):
Really appreciate him coming on and sharing all
those stories and all that information. And I
wanna thank Inductive too for sponsoring the episode
so we could bring you the audio and
video completely ad free. That said, don't forget
all the links are in the description. And
if you do use or are thinking about
using,
Ignition, then definitely consider going. I also was
given a free pass to attend the virtual
(27:34):
event, so I'll try to get you guys
reporting on that as the event is ongoing.
Now with all that said, I do wanna
thank you all for tuning back in this
week. Please share the podcast with other people.
It really helps
us find new vendors to come on the
show or maybe new product managers at existing
vendors that we haven't really hooked up with.
So I really appreciate when you guys share
(27:55):
the show out there. Let the vendors know
you're watching and listening. Or if you're a
vendor, let your colleagues know that it's worth
coming on the show because you get in
front of this great audience. And with that
said, I wanna wish you, my great audience,
good health and happiness. And until next time,
my friends,
peace.
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