Schedule

Main Keynote: Exploring 10 Years of Growth & Innovation

Type:  General   
Track:  Technology   

This year marks Inductive Automation’s tenth year hosting the Ignition Community Conference! In that time, it’s been amazing to see the community's growth and the positive impact its members have made on the industry. For this year’s company keynote, you’ll hear from Inductive Automation’s leadership team about the growth and direction of our company and our community as we celebrate the last decade and look forward to what’s to come.

Speakers: Steve Hechtman , Wendi-Lynn Hechtman , Colby Clegg , Katharina Robinett , Carl Gould , Don Pearson , Travis Cox , Kevin McClusky

Learning Ignition Fundamentals

Type:  Breakout   
Track:  Technology   
Level:  Beginner

If you're new to Ignition or just need a refresher, this is the session for you. Inductive Automation's training team will cover the basic knowledge and fundamental features you will need to get started with Ignition.

Speakers: Paolo Mariani , Carlos Contreras

Performance Tips & Tricks for Optimizing Gateway Networks

Type:  Breakout   
Track:  Technology   
Level:  Advanced

Getting the most out of your Ignition gateway network is important to your system’s performance, especially for large implementations. In this session, you’ll get expert tips about how to optimize the performance of your gateway network for heavy workloads.

Speakers: Travis Cox

How Far We’ve Come — Ignition Across the Enterprise

Type:  Breakout   
Track:  Enterprise   
Level:  Intermediate

Ignition was always great for solving problems and beloved by Operations. But could it scale? Could it be deployed across an enterprise? Could it stand up to scrutiny in the boardroom while execs are aligning on their digital strategy? Absolutely. Over the past several years, Brock Solutions has been deploying Ignition across enterprises, helping customers accelerate their digital transformations. But don't take it from Brock; hear it from our customers' mouths about how and why Ignition has become the real deal in their enterprise landscape.

Speakers: Davin McDougall , Joseph Donohue

Virtual Meetup: Meet the IA Staff

Type:  Virtual Meet-Up   

Running Ignition in a Container Environment

Type:  Breakout   
Track:  Technology   
Level:  Advanced

Leveraging Docker can be a powerful technology for rolling out large systems and setting up flexible development environments. In this session, you'll hear practical tips for running Ignition in a container environment from Inductive Automation's Docker expert.

Speakers: Kevin Collins

Ingestion to Insights

Type:  Breakout   
Track:  Development   
Level:  Beginner

In this informative session, attendees will learn how a manufacturer – or any automation setting – can successfully begin their industry 4.0 journey. Starting with data collection, then moving to data visualization, alerting, and analytics, Ignition allows organizations to do it all. And, with multiple web-based architectural options, Ignition offers flexibility while keeping cyber security in mind.

Speakers: Nadir Khoja

Ignition: The New Enterprise Connection Platform

Type:  Breakout   
Track:  Enterprise   
Level:  Intermediate

The quest for greater productivity and reduced costs is driving market forces and investments into new projects trying to combat today’s challenges from the supply chain, labor, and inflation. Learn how Ignition has advanced from the “New SCADA Platform'' to become the standard tool for OT-to-IT Enterprise Digital Transformation. The session will discuss and demonstrate how Ignition with MQTT/Sparkplug is the “Swiss Army knife” Digital Transformation platform from the edge to the cloud to achieve these goals. Get your Enterprise ready to Xperience and Xplore the serendipitous nature of your OT data!

Speakers: Arlen Nipper

Education & Industry Panel: Preparing the Workforce of the Future

Type:  Breakout   
Track:  Enterprise   
Level:  Beginner

Often, the difference between what you need to know to walk across that stage and get your diploma, degree, certificate, or credential is vastly different from what you need to know to be successful in your first entry-level position. Curriculum and program development happen in vastly different ways, from four-year colleges and universities to technical colleges, to community/junior colleges. How we, as an industry, communicate to address what we are seeing in the field is imperative to providing the engineer of tomorrow with the appropriate skill sets to encourage success. That conversation starts with industry and academia coming together to discuss the topics important to the ever-changing landscape of industrial technology. Join David Grussenmeyer, University Engagement Manager at Inductive Automation, for a panel discussion composed of four faculty members from different educational institutions and learn how their efforts to collaborate with Industry are changing the educational landscape for our workforce of tomorrow.

Speakers: Eugene Li , Josh Hamilton , Saeed Farahani, Ph.D. , Jeff Rankinen , David Grussenmeyer

Deploying the Digital Foundations of a Modern, Connected Factory

Type:  Breakout   
Track:  Technology   
Level:  Intermediate

Digital factory architectures usually grow organically as business requirements evolve and new technologies are developed. Modern technologies and approaches such as infrastructure-as-code, containerization, orchestration, and edge-driven operations solve many problems presented by legacy, organic, point-to-point based architectures. This presentation will give an overview of Factory+, a Sparkplug-powered, open-access digital factory framework developed by the AMRC, and how it can be used to rapidly and reliably deploy, manage and scale the digital foundations of a forward-thinking manufacturing facility.

Speakers: Alex Godbehere

Technical Keynote & Developer Panel

Type:  General   
Track:  Development   

This year, the co-creators of Ignition, Colby Clegg and Carl Gould will be expanding the traditional developer panel into a new format. In this new Technical Keynote, Colby and Carl will cover the recent progress of Ignition and look at the roadmap for the near future of the platform. They will also get some help from a few Software Engineering Division all-stars to give further insight into specific aspects of the platform like security, advanced analytics, and design tools. Like previous years, the Technical Keynote will include a Q&A portion, so come prepared with your best questions; this will be a session you won’t want to miss.

Speakers: Colby Clegg , Carl Gould , Sabrina Reis , Ray Sensenbach , Kevin Collins , Joel Specht

Modern Cloud Deployment Strategies

Type:  Breakout   
Track:  Technology   
Level:  Advanced

With the systems getting larger and the need for flexibility increasing, effectively running Ignition in the cloud can be a powerful deployment strategy. In this session, Inductive Automation’s architecture experts will talk about how to utilize the cloud for modern deployment strategies.

Speakers: Travis Cox , Kevin McClusky

Stone Brewing Successfully Implements Modern Batch System

Type:  Breakout   
Track:  Enterprise   
Level:  Intermediate

In this session, Stone Brewing and Wunderlich-Malec Engineering will showcase the first successful implementation of Sepasoft’s Batch Procedure Module. Going into the project, Stone Brewing hoped to upgrade to a flexible and modern batch system that could handle complex recipes. With the support of Wunderlich-Malec, Stone Brewing easily configured the module to replicate existing processes. Attend this session to learn about Stone Brewing’s quick adoption of Batch Procedure and more project highlights.

Speakers: Fred Zaboli , Nicole Williams

Key Trends Helping Industry Overcome Digital Transformation Challenges

Type:  Breakout   
Track:  Technology   
Level:  Beginner

Digital Transformation is essential for industrial companies to meet the challenges of thriving in an environment where the only certainty is uncertainty. This is driving demand for deploying key technologies to better monitor and control operations, protect against downtime, ensure product fulfillment and high productivity, protect and upskill personnel, enable remote workforces, manage supply chains, and do this while leveraging enhanced cybersecurity architectures. To help industrial companies meet these challenges, this presentation will discuss what are the key technologies and trends that can help these companies accelerate Digital Transformation that enables improved productivity, profitability, agility, reliability, sustainability, resilience and efficiency.

Speakers: Craig Resnick

Virtual Meetup: Industry Meetups

Type:  Virtual Meet-Up   

Top Tips for Great Mobile Interface Design

Type:  Breakout   
Track:  Development   
Level:  Beginner

Good mobile design makes it easy for users to see and control their system right from their phone, but making a good mobile design isn’t necessarily easy. This session will cover some of the best mobile design tips for creating interfaces that deliver a great user experience.

Speakers: Ray Sensenbach

Water and Wastewater: Exploring the Next Generation of Remote Telemetry Monitoring

Type:  Breakout   
Track:  Enterprise   
Level:  Intermediate

This session will show how a regional municipal council in Australia has implemented the next generation of remote telemetry monitoring and data-driven decision-making across their wastewater assets for a fraction of the cost of their peers. You’ll hear directly from the Alexandrina Council about how the Ignition system has fundamentally changed how they leverage data to interact with their assets. You will also hear from the technical team from SAGE Automation about implementing multi-device SCADA displays and the practical challenges that MQTT can present.

Speakers: Gary Lyons , Scott Avis

Unlocking Innovation and Delivering New Services Through Digital Transformation

Type:  Breakout   
Track:  Technology   
Level:  Beginner

Digital Transformation has accelerated as a result of the pandemic as nearly every industry and every company has had to adapt to changing work conditions, market conditions, and environmental conditions. Those companies that are thriving in this new normal have uncovered new value in leveraging technology to accelerate innovation cycles and deliver entirely new products, services, and even business models. Imagine fully recovering from this pandemic better off than before it started with entirely new revenue streams that fill the revenue gaps with even greater profitability through new channels. Learn how this can be done and hear the stories of companies who have succeeded.

Speakers: Jeff Winter

Sepasoft’s Low-Code Approach to Simplifying MES

Type:  Breakout   
Track:  Development   
Level:  Intermediate

MES can be one of the most challenging systems to implement due to the sheer number of departments, roles, manufacturing sites, and production scenarios involved. Learn about Sepasoft’s various initiatives that simplify the MES rollout. From the low-code capabilities of the Batch Procedure Module and Business Connector Suite, in addition to MES Starter Projects, Sepasoft is taking measures to simplify implementation development and set users up for success.

Speakers: Tom Hechtman , Mark French

Industry Panel: Exploring Digital Transformation

Type:  General   
Track:  Enterprise   

It takes coordination to revamp processes or upgrade machinery, but it’s a far more complicated task to establish change all the way from the plant floor to the C-suite. While the necessary Digital Transformation of manual operations may look different across a variety of industries, the critical benefits of increased stability, flexibility, and security remain consistent. Hear from a panel of industry thought leaders and experts as they explore how enterprise-wide solutions have led their companies to a new level of growth and answer your questions about large-scale Digital Transformation.

Speakers: Don Pearson , Craig Resnick , Jean-Paul Moniz , Dan Stauft , Keith Weerts , Ravi Subramanyan , Remus Pop

Integrator Panel: How Integration Has Changed & Where It’s Going

Type:  Breakout   
Track:  Enterprise   
Level:  Intermediate

This panel will bring together some of the Ignition community's most accomplished integrators to discuss how the industry has shifted over the past decade and what technologies and practices will be vital in the future. From IIoT-enabled hardware and cutting-edge security tools to eliminating paper from the plant floor, changes in the last 10 years have altered how integrators approach business and opened up new opportunities. But which areas still have room for refinement and innovation? Hear experienced professionals give their insight and answer your questions about the industry's past, present, and future.

Speakers: Chris Fischer , Chris Taylor , Mike Ficchi , Keith Gamble , Jeremiah Hannley

Git Serious: Hybrid Cloud Deployment with DevOps

Type:  Breakout   
Track:  Technology   
Level:  Intermediate

With Digital Transformation becoming more mainstream, we continue to see an increased adoption of enabling technologies like the cloud. But not all companies are willing or able to go "all-in" on cloud just yet. In this session, 4IR Solutions’ CTO Joe Dolivo will walk you through how to use Ignition to track and promote changes across multiple environments, no matter where they're hosted. Operational Technology leadership at Cameco Fuel Manufacturing will also walk you through the plans for their own hybrid cloud deployment, intended to run heavy production workloads on site while leveraging the cloud for remote site workloads, testing instances, backups, and monitoring.

Speakers: Joseph Dolivo , Jean-Paul Moniz

Virtual Meetup: Ask an Engineer

Type:  Virtual Meet-Up   

Using Ignition with Machine Learning Libraries

Type:  Breakout   
Track:  Development   
Level:  Advanced

Using Ignition and machine learning libraries can be a powerful combination. Inductive Automation's machine learning experts will lead conference attendees through practical applications for ML, along with typical ML setups that Ignition users could implement on their own systems.

Speakers: Kevin McClusky , Kathy Applebaum

Changes Towards the Digital Transformation – Turn and Face the Strange

Type:  Breakout   
Track:  Development   
Level:  Advanced

While data acquisition systems at the process level have become increasingly universal, the true Digital Transformation vision – the integration of all data across an organization to higher levels within a company - still faces a number of hurdles around bandwidth, multiple data-entry points, and conflicting software platforms. Here, we present how SCADA-driven data via Ignition with Starlink Satellite-Based Broadband can be combined with manual-entry mobile Perspective applications to provide a rich data source at the field and operations level. Once in the cloud, that data, in turn, can then be combined through API-based integrations with third-party platforms to provide higher-level insights to Research, Business Development, Engineering, Financial, and Executive divisions. Thus, from Operator to CEO, Ignition provides a true data integration platform up and down an organization.

Speakers: Peter J. Photos

Drain the Data Lake — Model and Contextualize Your OT Data at the Edge

Type:  Breakout   
Track:  Technology   
Level:  Intermediate

Join a panel of Ignition community experts who helped the State of Indiana launch a Digital Transformation program for manufacturers quickly and simply. Energy data, manufacturing output, and other OT data can be collected and modeled in-plant, and efficiently published into cloud infrastructure and unsupervised AI for actionable insights with a pre-built “I4.0 in a Box” solution.

Speakers: Arlen Nipper , Travis Cox , Benson Hougland , Dan Stauft , Michael Manzi

Build-a-Thon

Type:  General   
Track:  Development   

The 2021 Build-a-Thon was the first ever to feature members of the Ignition community battling it out head-to-head. This year, we invited all of Inductive Automation’s Premier Integrators to apply for a chance to wear the Build-a-Thon blazer, and after three rounds of challenges, the final two integrators, DMC and Roeslein & Associates, will face off at the conference. Be sure to get a front-row seat to the crowning of the next Build-a-Thon champion!

Speakers: Travis Cox , Kevin McClusky , Kent Melville