On the first day of sunshine in Dublin we gathered for the first EUC Ireland of 2025, it was like the sun came out for us. The venue added to it with the Sky suite in the Radison Blue taken over for the afternoon and into the evening. The views round Dublin from all sides of the balcony was stunning building now where we counted cranes in previous meetings.

After welcoming everyone I was running through the agenda slide which I was quite pleased with considering Copilot created it from my usual list, only to realise that the writing was so small no one could read it. Luckly Chris Mark’s had a few tips and tricks in his session on Taming the beast that is Power point which I will endeavour to do better next time.

The sponsors for the day were Parallels RAS and Stratodesk to relatively new players in the Irish market but have been around the EUC space for a considerable time, so it was great to give the Irish partner and user technical community a fell for where both technologies sit in the vast eco system that encompass EUC.

Other sessions for the day included Antoin Carrol on uberAgent, Interviewing in EUC – Bring your star which is a methodology in communication, something I found out on the day and was very interesting perspective on framing your answers to interview questions.

Since the acquisition on uberAgent by the Cloud Software Group it has slowly been integrated into the Citrix Hybrid Multi Cloud offering, it was good to hear how this is going, and Antoin clearly knows this stuff inside out. Still, some work to do with further integrations with director etc which will be interesting to watch.

Chris gave an overview of Parallels RAS as a potential alternative to run your VDI apps and desktops on any platform – On prem – Multi Cloud all the time ensuring the users have the same experience as at the end of the day the user just wants to see the app shortcut and run their apps to get the task of the day completed. I have been following Parallels RAS for some time, but I see interest really growing in their offering. Watch this space!

After we had the coffee break, Brendan Murphy gave us a very interesting session on Interviewing in EUC – Bring your star. For me I had to look this up before hand as was unsure and according to UDC:

“The STAR interviewing technique fits neatly into the category of behavioural interviewing by providing a neat format to answer behavioural questions. STAR is an acronym for: Situation, Task, Action, Result. An interviewer will ask questions designed to allow you to provide a STAR answer.”

This session was well received and speaking to one of the lads after it was timely as they were in the process of interviewing. Indeed, you could take the concepts of this methodology and use many aspects of it when you are interacting during the course of your workday.

Paul Craddock from Stratodesk gave the final sponsor presentation of the afternoon, introducing Stratodesk to the Irish User Group, with a compleing story particulary with Windows 10 end of life coming at us rappidly. Check out some of the other customer challanges they can help with :

Bringing us all to a close and sitting between the groups nibbles and beer Chris was back to see how we can tame the beast that is PowerPoint. This is a session I had a sneak preview when Chris and Jim Moyle did the session at E2EVC so new it would go down well. Some of the tips and tricks shown on the day will certainly help me as I try to up my Presentation game. You know it was a good session when I saw an attendee Alyn Pedan Auxilium IT deliver a presentation at the EUC Forum in London only days after with some of the tricks implemented!

Yes there was a few beers and some selfies after with lots of follow up conversations from the day’s presentations and the wider state of EUC in UK & I. Not to mention lots of vendor swag my 7 YO particularly liked the colourful water bottles. My fav was the wine corkscrew presented in a wooden case.

Keep an eye out for the next one which should be happening end of April start of June.