Repeating the central theme of the previous year, containers have once again been imposed as the central theme of the contest, in addition to others such as the Cloud, security and monitoring systems, and the development of free software. You want to know more? Go ahead…

openexpo It is the meeting point for companies that collaborate or develop products with free or opensource software, in addition to concentrating on the same day a multitude of talks on this theme. It is an event that brings together in a single day more than 3.000 senior professionals in the sector: representatives of the main companies and institutions, open source developers, hackers, experts, suppliers and users of all levels. As a novelty, this year the location has changed to 'LA N @ VE', a center for inspiration, education and innovation, located in Villaverde, Madrid.

First of all, tell you that the talks have not been recorded and not all the presentations have been published on the website, only those of those speakers who have given their consent to publish their presentation. You can find them here: http://www.openexpo.es/presentaciones-ponentes-openexpo-2017/ The references that I indicate below are only the description of the talk and the author, available in the OpenExpo program.

As we said, repeating the central theme of the previous year, the containers as the central theme of the contest and specifically Docker and its multiple extensions like Docker Compose, Docker Swarm, Kubernetes (Interesting talk about Live scaling of architectures on Google Cloud Platform with Kubernetes 1.6., offered by Javier Domingo de Ackstorm). In addition to the more than surprising collaboration of Microsoft with its system Azure and its Windows containers to try to compete with Linux containers, since they are the most used in the current market.

On this occasion, one of the themes that was also very popular at the event was Cloud since it marries very easily with containers, and two of its great sponsors were RedHat with its openShift and Windows with Azure again, in addition to the fact that many of the companies participating in the event were partners of Google Cloud o amazon ws. This meant that many of the talks will deal with the integration of its services in the Cloud and thus be able to carry out dynamic scaling, lowering costs and guaranteeing the high availability of the software. The chats:

• «The cloud computing revolution, a new era of development », by Antonio Pizarro from OVH.
• «Automatic deployment of scalable architecture based on microservices in the cloud«, By Roberto Galán from GMV.
• «Azure, an open cloud", by José Ángel Fernández from Microsoft.
• «Put a cloud in your life: be innovative, be efficient, be agile«, by Moisés Rivera of Red Hat.

Related to the two previous topics, talks were given about the security and monitoring systems, since it is one of the concerns of companies when entering these technologies and hosting their information and services in third-party systems:

• «WOCU, the monitoring solution for a connected world«, by Javier López-Tello, from A3SEC.
• «Cybersecurity, what can free software contribute to computer attacks« (OpenTalk).
• «Application security in the age of open source", by Luis Redondo of MTP-BLACKDUCK.
• "Virtual data center as a service", by Ceferino Agüeros de Masscomm and Francisco Javier Romero Jareño de Walhalla.

How could it be otherwise, many of the talks were dedicated to opensource or free software development and on what are the challenges that are expected in the future:

• «Opensource: how it was, what it is like and challenges and prospects for the future ”, by Francis Brosnan of ASPL.

As in the previous year, there was a talk dedicated to the new features of dolibarr, an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) completely modular and opensource for the business management of SMEs, independent professionals, self-entrepreneurs and associations:

• «What's new in ERP & CRM Dolibarr version 5«, By Bernardo Cabezas of 2byte.

Another modality of the OpenExpo talks has been the inclusion of various companies explaining their process of digital transformation, and the use of free and opensource software as an alternative to the development of its own tools, lowering costs and guaranteeing the use of tools developed and tested by a large community of users and companies:

• «Technological evolution of PC Components«, by Andrés Jiménez.
• «Challenges and contribution of Opensource to Repsol's business«, by Javier García.
• «Comprehensive management of Amnesty International Spain with free software«, by Pablo Campo.
• «PixelPro: A 100% opensource company«, by David Piqué.

There were also talks about languages ​​as an alternative to those already imposed, for example Groovy as an alternative to Java  (Do you want to improve your productivity and develop in java? So use groovy, by Alberto de Ávila de Salenda), in which they explained the virtues of this language that is gaining followers thanks to testing frameworks such as Spock, and the inclusion in Jenkins of the plugin pipeline that will allow us to implement our test and deploy flows, ... in a simple way, as another piece of code, and store them in our version control.

This time several spaces have been dedicated to one of the opensource technologies that is revolutionizing the systems of monetization (Bitcoin, ..), information storage and security of some platforms: this is Blockchain, a technical solution for distributed databases, with an open, non-hierarchical and secure nature:

• «Blockchain: an opportunity for society, the economy and the industry« (OpenTalk).
• «Why is blockchain important to you?«, by Alex Preukschat.
• «Bitcoin, blockchain and smart contracts: millionaire businesses from open source », by Pablo Fernández de Abanlex.

In addition, as is happening in all the important events that are taking place in Spain, this was not going to be less with the great movement of the software development communities in Spain, and especially in Madrid, and they have also had their place at Openexpo collaborating with the development of some of their meetups in the last hours of the event: Meetup ManageIQ, Meetup Docker Madrid, Meetup Madrid Python, Meetup Moodle & Analytics, Haskell Meetup,Meetup Digital Transformation Technologies, Meetup Cloud Computing.

To put an end to this article, I have to say that it seemed like a great event: it has improved a lot compared to what was seen in the previous year and, being a free event, it has hosted many of the companies in the sector, being able to see their products and proposals as well as a great compendium of talks on a very diverse subject.

But not everything was going to be positive, since the venues were not well dimensioned for most of the talks (other events such as Codemotion changed their system to voting to avoid these situations, although we understand that many of the talks in this event are contingent upon by the sponsors (some of them, by the way, with a fairly low level). Taking into account the possibility of not being able to attend talks either due to capacity or due to overlapping schedules, it would be appreciated if in other editions it was decided to record the talks, as it is a great way to expose the talent of the speakers and conferences, it would give the opportunity to be able to see the talks later or to enjoy the event to those who could not attend.

But above all, long live Free Software and Opensource, and thanks to OpenExpo for giving it the visibility it deserves.