It’s a wrap on Citrix’s first-ever developer conference, Citrix Converge, and we couldn’t have hoped for a better way to reveal the vision and opportunity with Citrix Workspace. On October 2 and 3, at our campus in Santa Clara, Citrix welcomed and hosted over 100 developers from around the world and across our partner ecosystems who showcased ways for us to join together and develop the future of work.

It was clear from the get-go that we had an engaged audience. The entire conversation and event agenda was designed around demonstrating how to use the Citrix Workspace platform and providing the developers the instruction, time, and tools they needed to create microapps. Spoiler alert: it worked!

The conference started off with Citrix VP Fouad ElNaggar laying out, in no uncertain terms, the crisis facing today’s workers: there are too many applications, they are too complicated, and there’s too much context switching. Countless hours are being lost to employees haplessly searching for apps, files, and trying to pick up where they left off. This deadly complexity conundrum takes employees away from the work they (and their employers!) want and need to do and is a major contributor to poor employee experience.

Citrix Chief Product Office PJ Hough followed with an examination of how the Citrix Workspace ecosystem is designed to address these challenges with new technologies — microapps, the intelligent feed, and a virtual assistant — that are designed to bring delightful consumer-like experiences to Enterprise work. PJ went on to outline the opportunity for developers to extend this platform, integrate new applications, and redefine workflows in new, more efficient, low-stress ways.

As Day 1 continued, attendees were treated to detailed architecture discussions and hands-on labs with the Citrix Workspace microapp builder. Once everyone had successfully built a microapp and was able to streamline a workflow from the JIRA application from Atlassian, they were unleashed for a six-hour hackathon. With fabulous prizes (and bragging rights) at stake, they set about integrating various SaaS systems with Citrix Workspace to accelerate workflows. After the Hackathon, 15 developer teams presented demos on their microapps. You can check out the detailed demo summary.

If you don’t believe me when I say it was a great event, our very own Sean Donahue (or “SeanDo” as he’s affectionately known) was OnTheGo at Citrix Converge to connect and capture feedback from our attendees.

Fujitsu/RunMyProcess (ISV):

HPE Pointnext (Consulting):

Entisys 360 (Consulting):

Fujitsu Consulting:

Overall, the event exceeded our expectations and raised the bar for next time. And trust me, there will be a next time!