The third edition of Devoxx UK 2015 was in London, between 17th and 19th June. This was my first conference since I joined Tomitribe. The dynamics were a little different for me this time. I actually had a triple role: attendee, speaker and exhibitor. Since Tomitribe was also sponsoring the event I had to spend some time at our booth to interact with other developers using TomEE and to promote to the ones that don’t know it yet. During that time, we also worked to push out the latest release of TomEE with most of the Java EE 7 support!
Venue
Devoxx UK was held at the same location as last year: The Business Design Centre. This year, more rooms were available, since the number of attendees was also higher. I don’t have the exact number, but I guess that close to 1 thousand might have attended the event. The Exhibition Hall was more or less the same, but I was surprised to see that some usual sponsors didn’t make it this time. The Community Hall pretty much had a non-stop Hackergarten well managed by Heather VanCura. By the way, what is wrong with the picture? I rule as a photographer, right? 🙂
Sessions
The program was interesting enough, a lot of diverse subjects and you had five options to attend on each scheduling bracket. I was not always into sessions, since I also needed to spend some time in the Exhibition and Community Halls. Not a problem, because all the sessions were recorded and are going to be available on Parleys, which is cool. These are my top 3 sessions (from the ones I have attended):
You should get the first two sessions on Parleys. But the third one is already available:
Also, have a quick look to this awesome Ignite Session by Tonya Rae Moore:
My Session
I’ve got to speak about the Five Ways to Not Suck at Being a Java Freelancer. It may sound a little strange, since I’ve put the Freelancer life on hold. I’ve submitted the session before that event and I think it’s still valid to provide some of my experience during my Freelancer life. Here is a session about it:
This is not exactly related to the conference itself, but since I was in London I’ve met with my good friend Simon Maple to conduct our second Book Reading session. If you are not aware, vJUG started a new initiative: the Book Reading Club. The idea is for the attendees to gather around a book, read it and discuss it. We started with the awesome book Effective Java by Joshua Bloch. We had our second meeting around the book and it was fun to hear Josh explain some of the decisions made around the development of the Collections API, Generics and For each statement. A must see:
Community
The Community was awesome as always! This time I had the pleasure to have with me some very good friends from Portugal:
When thinking of stuff to do in the Hackergarten, I had the idea to write a small piece of code to perform Method Caching using the new JCache API. I’ve soon discovered that I’ve gotten beaten by Andy Gee (no hard feelings). Anyway, we had some interesting discussions about it with Bruno Baptista and Sebastian Daschner. Check the result: JCacheExamples.
Java EE BoF
Also on the Java EE BoF we had the usual discussion between Java EE and Spring. In my honest opinion, I think this discussion is pointless. Both technologies can be used together and everyone is free to pick the parts that fit their project more. On the other hand, I think that Spring has done a fantastic job with Spring.io website. Java EE has a lot of information, but it’s all spread around the Internet. I believe that this causes a bad impression to new developers and in the end they may end up favouring Spring more.
Also, the adoption of Java EE 7 has been slow in the organizations. There is no Application Server support yet and companies are lacking the resources to perform the migration. I’ve personally been working in a Java EE 5 to 7 migration and I intent to make a session about it.
20 Years of Java
Do you have any idea what was going on when Java was born?
During the event, there was a lady taking polaroid pictures of developers. These pictures went into a wall and organized by the year you wrote the first line of Java code. I remember that it was in 1996 for me. I was writing an HTML website, but was unhappy that I couldn’t do any kind of dynamic behaviour. Searching on the web, I’ve found the solution: Java Applets! I bought a book called “Learn Java in 30 Days” and I wrote my first line of Java in the Notepad. I wondered where was IntelliJ at that time!
Final Thoughts
That’s all! Hope you enjoyed this report. Cya next year!
I kicked off my conference year by attending during the last week Jfokus 2015 and the first edition ever of Voxxed Days held in Vienna. I was scheduled as a speaker for both conferences with my sessions about Java EE 7 Batch Processing in the Real World and The 5 People in your Organization that grow Legacy Code.
Jfokus
This was Jfokus 9th edition, so we can expect a great celebration next year for the 10th anniversary edition. We are still one year away, but I already scheduled it in my calendar! The conference was 3 days long, with the first day dedicated to Tutorials and the next couple of days to conference sessions. The numbers are impressive. It had over 1700 attendees, making it one of the largest Java conferences in Europe.
Sessions
Docker had been a hot topic over the last year. So, naturally we had a few sessions dedicated to Docker. I do recommend checking out the Docker Workshop from Ken Sipe. You can find it here. It also includes how to scale Docker using Apache Mesos. Apache Mesos is a distributed system kernel that abstracts CPU, memory, storage, and other resources away from machines so you can program against your datacenter like it’s a single pool of resources. Unfortunately, I think this tutorial session was not recorded. Only a few rooms had their sessions recorded.
These are my top 3 sessions (from the ones I have attended):
I had my session about Java EE Batch Processing in the Real World as a Lightning Talk. It was a bit hard to do it in only 15 minutes, since the session was originally planed for a full conference session of 50 minutes. Anyway, I was able to demo everything I wanted.
I also had the privilege to be a guest to the Live Nighthacking stream with Stephen Chin, where I talk about Java EE Batch in much more detail. Check it out:
And here are some slides. I didn’t use them all the Lighting session, since they are from my full session.
Voxxed Days Vienna
A new brand of smaller conferences was launched as Voxxed Days. These are one day tech events organised by local community groups and supported by the Voxxed and Devoxx team. I was happy enough to be part of the first edition ever and to be a speaker of course! We got the usual cinema like venue, which is to be expected from the Devoxx brand. There were probably around 200 attendees, or maybe a little more.
Sessions
Since this was a one day only conference, there were not many sessions, but we had 4 full tracks worth of content to choose from. I recommend to check out Monadic Java by Mario Fusco with a very good way to explain Monads in Java to newbies. Also, Coding Culture by Sven Peters is a must. You will hear real life stories about how Atlassian evolved as a company and how they create awesome stuff. These sessions were recorded and should be available on Parleys very soon.
My Session
I had the session about The 5 People in your Organization that grow Legacy Code. I have presented the same session for the first time in Java One and the recording was released a few days before I delivered the session in Vienna. This was great, since it gave the change to check some of the mistakes I made and correct a few things. This one was also recorded. Let’s see if I improved a little bit. Thank you to Sven Peters, which provided me with a few pointers to improve my presentation stance.
I als have to mention Paulo Grácio. We worked together for 6 years and he was a mentor to me in the early stages of my career. Paulo is now working in Stockholm and we are far from each other, but I’m looking forward to work together again. Thanks for the hospitality!
After attending Devoxx, I followed directly to Sofia – Bulgaria to attend one of the most popular conferences in the region called Java2Days. Java2Days started 6 years ago by Iva, Nadia and Yoana (yes, they are all girls). They have been doing a terrific job organizing and growing the conference over the last few years. This edition counted more than 800 attendees and 25% were women! For years, the tech world has been trying to attract more women is a world mostly dominated by men. For instance, Devoxx women’s attendance was only 5%. Maybe the tech world could extract a few lessons from Java2Days on how to attract more women.
This was my first time at Java2Days and I really enjoyed my time there. I was also invited as a speaker, to talk about the same sessions I’ve presented at JavaOne: Java EE 7 Batch Processing in the Real World with Ivan Ivanov and The 5 people in your organization that grow legacy code.
Sessions
Java2Days kicked out with a packed room to listen to a very good inspirational keynote by John Davies about Technology Landscape and Innovation. I’ve retained the following words: “If you don’t innovate others will”. Check the full keynote here.
Most of the speakers were local guys (speaking in English) and they delivered great content. Java2Days is a perfect place for less known speakers to show their skills (myself included).
I’ve spent a lot of time hacking, but also attended a few sessions. These are my top 3 sessions (from the ones I have attended):
Unfortunately, the sessions were not recorded, but you can check the slides here.
My Sessions
After practicing a bit more on the presentations following JavaOne I was more comfortable doing the sessions. I’m very happy with the result. Attendees seemed interested and the rooms were full for both sessions. Thank you everyone that attended the sessions.
The community was amazing! Very friendly and happy to have people from outside of Bulgaria. Also a lot of Macedonians in the conference, which invited me to attend their own event next year. If I’m available, I will gladly attend.
I’ve also noticed that some attendees don’t feel comfortable enough approaching speakers. This is nothing new, since it also happens in other conferences, but I would like to leave this message: feel free to ALWAYS approach me and engage in conversation with me. I’m going to be very disappointed if I’ve missed the opportunity to engage with someone, because he or she couldn’t get to me. Please do it next time!
Final Words
Java2Days was a great conference. I was surprised with the atmosphere, which was awesome and friendly. I was very well treated by everyone, and I already have plans to return next year. If you find the time, don’t hesitate to pay Java2Days a visit.
A big thanks to Iva, Nadia and Yoana for having me at Java2Days and for being great hosts to me. Also a special thanks to Ivan Ivanov for convincing me to go there and for his awesome hospitality. Cya next year!
I spent the last week in San Francisco to attend JavaOne 2014. This was my third time attending JavaOne, so I was already familiarized with the conference. Anyway, this year was different since I was going as a speaker for the first time.
Create the Future
“Create the Future” was the theme of JavaOne this year. The last few years have been very exciting for the Java community. After many years without evolution, we see now Java 8 with lambdas and streams, Java EE 7 with new specifications and simplifications)and a huge effort to unify and support Java for embeddable devices. Java 9 is already in the pipeline which promises modular Java (project Jigsaw). Java EE 8 is going to improve a lot of specifications and bring new ones like MVC, JSON-B and the much awaited JCache. Now it’s the time to contribute by Adopting a JSR.
During the last few years we heard a lot of voices claiming that Java is dead. Looking at what’s happening now, it doesn’t seem that way. The platform is evolving, a lot of new developers are joining the JVM ecosystem, and the conference was vibrating with energy. By the way, Java is turning 20 years in 2015. Let’s see what is going to happen in 20 years from now. Let’s hope that this blog is still around!
Keynote
The opening Keynote was a recap on what’s happening in the last few years. You can find all the videos here. Just a few notes:
The technical Keynote was interrupted because of lack of time. This also happened to me in one of my sessions. I understand that there is a time frame, but this was not the best way to kick out the conference. I’m pretty sure that most attendees would prefer to shorten up the Strategy Keynote for the Technical one.
I was referenced in the Community Keynote, because of my work at the Java EE 7 Hackergarten. Thank you Heather VanCura. Count me in with future contributions!
Venue
The event was split between the Moscone Center, The Hilton Hotel and the Parc 55 Hotel. I’m not from the time where JavaOne was completely held in the Moscone Center, so I can’t compare. Because of the layout of the hotels, you need to run sometimes from session to session and the corridors are not the best place to have groups of people chatting. A few of the rooms also have columns in the middle which makes difficult for the attendees and the speaker to be aware of everything.
In my session Development Horror Stories [BOF4223] I had to run with Simon Maple, to get there on time. The problem was that the previous slot sessions were held at the Hilton and then moved to the Moscone, which is a 15 minutes walk. By the way, no taxi wanted to take us because it was too close.
Food
Not even going to comment about it. Yeah the lunch sucked, and yeah I’m weird with the food.
Sessions
There is so much stuff going on, that it’s impossible to attend every session that you want to go. I probably only attended half of the sessions that I’ve signed up for. I had to split some of my time between the sessions, the Demogrounds, the Hackergarten and also a bit of personal time for the last details of my sessions. Not all sessions had video recording, but all of them should have audio and be available via Parleys.
These are my top 3 sessions (from the ones I have attended):
I’m relatively happy with my performance delivering the sessions, but I can improve much more. I do have to say, that I didn’t feel any nervousness. I guess that I’m feeling more comfortable on public speaking, plus preparing everything with a few weeks in advance also helped. Moving forward!
Development Horror Stories [BOF4223]
with Simon Maple
We had around 150+ people signed up, but only 50 or so showed up. I think this was related to the switch venues problem I described earlier. At the same time there was also an Oracle Tech Party with food, drinks and music. I guess that didn’t help either.
Anyway, me and Simon kicked out the BOF with a few of our own stories where things went terribly wrong. The crowd was really into it, so our plan to ask people for the audience to share their own stories worked perfectly. We probably had around 10+ people stepping up the stage. In the end we had a Java 8 In Action book give away signed by the author, for the best story voted by the audience. The winning story belong to Jan when he wrote a few scripts to clear and insert data into a database for tests. Unfortunately he executed it in a production environment by accident!
I think people enjoyed the BOF and this can work in pretty much everywhere. I’ll submit it in the future to other conferences. BOF’s don’t really need slides, but we did some anyway:
Java EE 7 Batch Processing in the Real World [CON2818]
with Ivan Ivanov This session was the first one of the day at 8.30 in the morning and was packed with people. It was surprising to see so many so early. Me and Ivan started the session with an introduction on Batch, origins, applications and so on. Next we went through the JSR-352 API to prepare for our demo at the end. The demo is based around World of Warcraft and we used the Batch API to download, process and extract metrics from the game Auction House’s (they are like eBay in the game). Stay tuned for a future post describing the entire sample.
Unfortunately we run out of time and we couldn’t show everything that we wanted, or at least go into more details about the demo. We allowed people to ask questions anytime, and we had a lot o them. I’m not complaining about it. I prefer doing it this way, since it makes the session more interactive. On the other hand, you end up using more time and is not very predictable. We will reorganize the session to perform the demo in the middle and everything should be fine like that.
CON4255 – The 5 people in your organization that grow legacy code
I’m pretty happy with how this session go. Considering that it was the last day of the conference and also one of the last sessions of the day, I had probably around 80+ people. I’m also happy because it was video recorded, so I can check it properly later.
I’m not going to spoil the content, but I think the attendees really enjoyed the session and had many moments to laugh about the content. I’ll just leave you with the slides:
Final Words
The event was huge, so I’m probably writing another post about it, since I don’t want to write a very long boring post. Next one is going to focus a little more on other sessions, activities and community!
I would like to thank everyone that attended my sessions and send a few specials ones: to Reza Rahman for helping me in the submission process, to Heather VanCura for the Hackergarten invite and for my co-speakers Ivan Ivanov and Simon Maple. Thanks everyone!
I think you can tell that I’m very nervous during the first few minutes, but I was able to calm down a bit afterwards. I do hate to hear me speak, since the voice I hear does not sound like mine. In fact, no one sounds like they hear and where is why. Anyway, I should stop with so many “eeehhhmm” and “so”. I have to improve that.
Devoxx UK was held at the same location as last year: The Business Design Centre. This year, more rooms were available, since the number of attendees was also higher. I don’t have the exact number, but I guess that close to 1 thousand might have attended the event. The Exhibition Hall was more or less the same, but I was surprised to see that some usual sponsors didn’t make it this time. The Community Hall pretty much had a non-stop Hackergarten well managed by Heather VanCura. By the way, what is wrong with the picture? I rule as a photographer, right? 🙂
