Synon officially awarded best booth at the Spring 1996 COMMON Expo held in San Francisco, CA (April 14-19).
Attendees were asked on their Expo evaluation forms to vote for the company they felt had the best booth at the Expo. Synon won hands down, beating out over 156 other companies present at the Expo.
Synon contrasted Obsydian’s model based development capability, business objects and scaleability through an entertaining cooking analagy. Attendees were invited to stop by to have a “recipe for success” revealed to them.
The Recipe for Success
Presentations were given every half an hour. Hosted by Synon’s very own French Chef, Chef Michael (rumored to have trained at the Sorbonne in Paris). Chef Michael kept the audience mesmerized with entertaining antics illustrating Obsydian’s capabilities through powerful simple analogies everyone could relate to.
Obsydian was described to attendees as a model-based integrated toolset that provided automatic rippling of changes throughout applications (illustrated by mixing chocolate sauce into a large jug of milk, as opposed mixing one glass at a time). Audience members were also told to think of Obsydian business objects as pre-built, pre-tested, high quality components which accelerated development (making the analogy of a pre-made cake sponge as opposed to building each sponge from scratch). Finally, Obsydian’s high powered environment provided the capability of creating large scale applications (just like large cakes, even 3-tier wedding cakes as opposed to the small muffin producing capability of other tools)
Cooking up a recipe for success! 
Chef Michael introduces the audience to the art of making chocolate milkshake.
Just add to zee milk …
et voila! Audience members “could have their cake and eat it too!”
Chef Michael was then followed by a 15 minute technical Obsydian demonstration given by Senior Synon Application Consultants, while they sat back and enjoyed a snack of freshly baked cupcakes and chocolate milk, compliments of Synon.
Traffic around the Synon booth was burgeoning. At one stage there were so many attendees gathered round the booth, that the congestion over spilled onto the surrounding aisles, effectively creating a booth traffic jam! (unprecedented at COMMON Expos)
In addition, everyone who attended received a very “tasteful” Obsydian T-shirt that simply read Got OBSYDIAN? (Parodying the popular U.S. Got Milk commercials)
In addition to hosting the popular Expo booth, Synon contributed over 30 technical and management presentations during the conference as well as 2 sell out Obsydian Test Drive labs.
Taking the Test Drive
The Obsydian Test Drive was a 2 hour lab providing participants with an opportunity get their hands on Obsydian and learn more about the intricacies of the tool. A detailed workbook was provided and allowed a step by step guide to building and implementing an Obsydian application. The lab not only took the participants through exercises but also explained to them the philosophy and power of Obsydian at each stage of the development process.
Leading the lab was Professor Michael (His apron now traded in for a lecturers lab coat) together with over 12 Synon employees ready to assist lab participants whenever they had questions or needed guidance. At the end of each lab, everyone who attended not only received a guided tour of Obsydian but took away with them the comprehensive workbook, enabling them to reflect on their experience and providing them with a handy reference. No wonder the labs received rave reviews.
Synon will once again be cooking up a storm in Atlanta at the 1996 Fall COMMON conference (Oct 20-25). We will again be featuring our award winning booth and performing numerous educational sessions, notably the Obsydian test drive lab.
Do stop by and pay us a visit! (A word of advice, Obsydian labs at COMMON sell out almost from day one, make sure you book your spot early).
Meanwhile, can you say that you “Got OBSYDIAN?”
If you can’t, give Synon a call!