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:

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  Ignition Community Conference

  
  


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  Download Ignition

  
  


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  Inductive University – Learn Ignition for free

  
  


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  The Forum: Talk to the Ignition Community

  
  


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  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 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 company, but, hilariously, 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, 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 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

Shawn Tierney (Host): the conference is the Buildathon, which we’ve been doing for I don’t know how many years now. But it’s, yeah. So just just to give your your

Paul Scott (Ignition): 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 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.

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, 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, 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 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, 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.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah.

Paul Scott (Ignition): 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