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The OFBiz track at the Apachecon NA 2015 event in Austin, Texas, USA involved all aspects of OFBiz including business and development, with speakers from the US and Europe and Asia. Summary abstracts of the presentations were as follows:

Abstract Summary: State of Apache OFBiz

Apache OFBiz is an open source product for the automation of enterprise processes that includes framework components and business applications for ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems.

This talk will provide an introduction to OFBiz, its history and its community.

It will also summarize the main areas of recent developments, where the project stands today and where it is going.

Abstract Summary: Why Large Companies Use Apache OFBiz ERP

We have done several installations of Apache OFBiz in large companies that have revenues of $300M+ . This presentation will show why these companies selected OFBiz and how the system was implemented using BPM, agile project management and involved the practice of continuous improvement and deployment.

Abstract Summary: Can OFBiz Stand the Stringent Regulatory Requirements of Pharmaceutical Manufacturing?

OFBiz is an eCommerce and general purpose ERP platform that provides a solid foundation for reliable, secure and scalable enterprise solution; OFBiz is backed by a solid framework and robust set of tools under the hood, which makes extending the platform to specialty industries a breeze. Pharmaceutical Manufacturing is arguably the most regulated industry around and easily qualifies as a specialty industry as it is mandatory to comply with the regulatory requirements from a number of federal agencies. The three biggest challenges facing Pharmaceutical Manufacturing include:

• Inventory Management for ingredients and products that have limited shelf life and the system needs to track expired and close-to-end-of-life inventory accurately.
• Production Management / Quality Assurance where batch tracking for both ingredients and products is mandated as part of recall management; Fulfillment systems must address the security and shipping labelling aspects; As the ingredients and products go through a number of life cycle stages typical to this industry, accurate labelling is the key for traceability.
• Regulatory compliance requires comprehensive audit history across the platform and document management with proper version control.

In this presentation, we will walk you through the OOTB features, platform extensibility and tool-sets that are available under the hood that makes implementing the complex regulatory requirements easy to achieve

Abstract Summary: Buidling Mobile Business Applications with Apache OFBiz

In the race to develop the next big innovation in mobile applications the focus is often hot new technologies like distributed data stores or "platform as a service". Critical business components like inventory management, accounting and order fulfillment may not be addressed until far too late in the game. OFBiz is not a new technology but it provides a set of business components that few systems can match. In this talk we will see how OFBiz can be used to provide RESTful business services to JavaScript single page applications using hot web technologies like RequireJS and Backbone. We'll talk about the relationship between these kinds of interfaces and the current OFBiz page rendering technologies and open the floor for a spirited discussion of where they could take OFBiz in the future.

Abstract Summary: Using Docker for Development of Production Systems based on OFBiz

Development of ofbiz-based projects has, in the past, been limited to what could be installed easily from a quick source code checkout. In ofbiz, the default configuration attempts to use java to provide all resources, apis, and automata one would need. This makes getting up and running quickly, but a production deployment is seldom done this way.

In a production environment, there will generally be many different pieces of software configured to run as a single unit. Sometimes, multiple machines will even be utilized. However, it has been hard to represent such an environment for a developer to use; that is, until the introduction of docker. With docker, it becomes easy to spin up small virtualized instances of linux, which then allows for the exact same production software to be installed and used by developers in the field.

Abstract Summary: How to Avoid Common Mistakes in OFBiz Development

Get a jump-start on your next Apache OFBiz project. Learn from an experienced OFBiz contributor how to avoid some common mistakes. Not just for beginners, this presentation draws from more than 10 years of OFBiz experience, looking at time-tested solutions that work! Topics include:

1. Common getting started problems
2. Common customization problems
3. Common design problems
4. Common integration problems

Apachecon EU 2014 in Budapest, Hungary was a great success. Not only regarding meeting community members and learn about each others differences in a softer setting, but also in respect to new people interested in the result of what the community does.

Next year there will be a new Apachecon event being held in Austin, Texas (The U.S. of A), and of course it will present us - again - with the opportunity to meet new users and contributors. It also creates the opportunity to exchange ideas, discuss issues and showcase application areas, features and functionality of OFBiz.

We'd like to try and prepare for talks across a wide range of areas so that we will have a good mix of topics. Some possible categories could be:

• Introduction (e.g. to ofbiz in general or a specific application, the framework and services, where we are and state of the project)
• Business (e.g. how OFBiz is being used and which industries, etc)
• Technical (e.g. Tools, Extentions, Configuration)
• Development (e.g. getting started, building a new application, modifiying an existing one,)
• Case Study/User Story (e.g. implementation story, challenges and successes etc)
• Panel Discussion (e.g. Open source ERP vs Commercial etc)
• Tutorial (NOTE: No official Tutorials planned for Austin although tutorial sessions can be run using the presentation sessions eg. 2 slots)
• Wildcard

If you interested in submitting or presenting a talk about what you have done with OFBiz - whether as an enhancement, a case study or something else -  please feel free to add a line to following table and add a child page with the abstract and main points.

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Be aware that if you are indeed interested in presenting at the ApacheCon US 2015 you must:

• also register yourself and submit your proposal at the events site of the Linux Foundation (the event partner of the Apache Software Foundation), see: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/apachecon-north-america .

Please Note that the number of open spots for presentations are limited and conditions regarding acceptance could be subject to change. Although the closing date for accepting presentations is 1st February 2015, it is highly recommended that you submit your talk as soon as possible

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