After years of virtual events – it was such a joy to finally get to dust off those name badges and be back in person at the annual Qlik conference – this time in fabulous and bustling Las Vegas, and with 3000+ attendees in person and 15000+ joining virtually you really get the sense that Qlik is certainly back in town.
Personally, I was very excited to be at this event together with dear INTELLISHORE colleagues Mark, Sofie, Adam – and as a presenter together with our customer Mikkel and Nordisk Film – what a joy! We also had the pleasure of welcoming another of our customers, ALK, attending with the presence of Eduardo Ferran and Rafał Antosik.
The conference kicked off with Mike Capone delivering a quite interesting keynote focusing on the direction of Qlik, specifically after the intended acquisition of Talend. I think there is no doubt that Qlik is moving more and more into the data platform sphere and beyond the dashboard with even more focus on data integration, AutoML, and Automation.
Another big announcement was the change in pricing model – moving away from named licenses and more into a direction of capacity-based pricing. That is already available for the Qlik Cloud Data Integration and will be available later this year for Qlik Sense – a major shift in strategy from Qlik, which I find very interesting and also about time!
Being a visualization nerd, the breakout sessions on the latest visualization advancements and roadmap in Qlik Sense from Patric Nordström are always a high for me. Very happy to see the acknowledgment to close the gap between some of the QlikView functionality and, later this year, also introducing the canvas container.
QlikWorld 2023 was also my first as a Qlik Partner Ambassador, and I enjoyed the Tuesday event together with other Qlik aficionados and Mike Capone cutting the 30th Qlik Anniversary cake! Yes, Qlik was founded all the way back in 1993!
Another big tradition at the conference is the appreciation party on the last day. It is always very exciting what the planning team comes up with – and this year was no exception. The big Alliance stadium next to the convention centre and home of the Las Vegas Raiders formed the background and rounded off the conference in a nice and festive matter.
I think there is no doubt that we will return for next year’s physical conference, and we are very much looking forward to seeing the strategic direction of Qlik come into action in the future. Lastly, a big thanks to our customers for attending together with us!