BPM2013

The BPM conference series just had its 10th 11th (thanks @profBPM) edition in Beijing and it was great to be part of it. The conference is the best place to see the most relevant work in BPM research. So I consider it a great honor to be invited to present the keynote of the last day.

I took the opportunity to share my ideas about BPM in the cloud. The cloud drives a transformation in our sector. The impact on BPM is not so much about the technical underpinnings of elasticity, scale and multi tenancy. But much bigger is the push towards simplicity. In cloud economics, solutions that can bring their value in a simpler way have a significant adoption advantage. The other change driving BPM forward is the addition of ad hoc collaboration. We’re heading to a seamless combination of flexible ad hoc work and repetitive processes.

Researchers might be tempted to specialize and work in more complex directions. But to my surprise, my message of simplicity was actually well received. One of the main research themes is process mining. I saw some very nice ideas about how process mining can bridge the gap between ad hoc work and repetitive processes.

The networking was great and it happened in a magnificent scenery. I even had the chance to do some sightseeing at the forbidden city and discover the chinese lightweight approach to toilets :-)