With only 2 and a half days to go, I'm a bit curious about this years conference bag and lanyard. Regular visitors of the Javapolis/Devoxx conference will remember the Kamasutra inspired coffee spoon theme, the dark red t-shirt, lanyard and conference bag of 3 years ago. The year after, the theme was about "meet your idols", with a blue t-shirt, and flashy/fluo blue lanyard and bag. Last year, the theme was Star Wars inspired: everything was black, as a black hole can be.

Knowing this, I wonder if the colour of this year's theme will repeat in the goodies. Seeing the yellow speaker dolls of this year's theme, I think the classic family picture on Thursday morning may resemble to a box of banana's: all yellow T-shirts, lanyards and bags.

Let the Chiquita conference begin...

With less than 1 week to go and a schedule that should be as final is possible (last minute changes not taking into account), this is the right moment to revisit my topic choices for the conference: check if my initial choices (see also http://arrayindexoutofboundsexception.skynetblogs.be/post... - sorry, in Dutch) are still valid, whether some interesting topics have been moved, possibly overlapping with other interesting sessions.

University days

Day 1

The morning session remains unchanged: I stick to the REST (in peace) session. Apparently I didn't choose a session for the afternoon. Probably there wasn't a session I cared about in the afternoon, when writing about my initial choices mid October. However, this has changed apparently. The afternoon session will probably be Java Power Tools. It is always interesting to have an overview useful tools (even for someone who no longer is a full time Java developer).

Day 2

My initial choices were Comet: Never more! for the morning and GWT for the afternoon. The final schedule did not provoke any change in my initial choices.

Conference days

Day 1

The key notes of this day seem interesting enough to attend: Java FX and RFID. My initial choice for the first session was Creating amazing user interfaces with DOJO and DWR. However, at the same time, there is a session about workload estimation: "Fingers in the air, a gentle introduction to software estimation. Could be useful as well... Even more useful for me for my daily activities.

The session after the lunch was initially Introduction to the SpringSource dm Server. At the same time, there is a session about "How to hack and secure your Java web application". This is a session from/about OWASP, the Open Web Application Security Project. But since I attended the OWASP conference in Ghent this spring, I don't think this 1 hour conference talk will give me much more information...

As foreseen, the following hour will be an opportunity to update my blog. Nothing interesting here.

After the break, my initial choice was "The web, can we get there from here?", but apparently this talk has been (re)moved. Possibly the talk about Spring 3.0 or, more likely, the talk about "AJAX for everyone, building better rich internet applications faster with JSF".

Final session of the day was, and remains "RESTful design patterns and anti-patterns".

Day 2

Mid October, the keynotes of day 2 were still to be announced. Apparantly they are interesting enough to attend: "Effective Java Reloaded" by Josh Bloch and Java SE7 update.

My choice for the first conference talk of day 2 was initially the OWASP talk about hacking and securing web applications. This talk is moved to day 1. The talk about HTML 5 and web sockets is from the same speakers of the university talk about Comet. Will probably be just a distilled version of their university talk. Blog time!

And it is going to be a VERY long lunch break, because the next time slot does not offer anything interesting to me either.

Next session: "How do we test this stuff?" Was my initial choice too. No change.

After the break, my initial choice was JEE6 overview, but at the same time, there is a session about "Preventing bugs with pluggable type-checking for Java". THis may be more useful and applicable than the JEE6 overview...

Close of the day is for the session on JAX-RS.

Day 3

My initial choice was about "Building web applicarions with the SpringSource dm Server", but maybe the talk about "Implementing agile at enterprise level" is a good alternative, since we will most likely never use the SpringSource server and I have always been a believer in an agile approach.

For the next talk, I initially thought about Effective SOA + GRIDs, but at second sight the Java + XSLT 2.0 talk seems more interesting.

The final session: again a change of mind. I probably will not attend the session on EJB 3.1, but go for XML persistence instead. I have been involved previously in projects dealing with persisting XML documents. This may be a good opportunity to see "what we did wrong"...

Conclusion

Apparently, there have been some changes is the schedule that affected my initial choices. Mostly, the impact is limited, except for the extra long lunch break during day 1 of the conference.

Links

• The Devoxx site: http://www.devoxx.com
• The PDF-version of the (preliminary) schedule booklet can be found here:
  http://www.devoxx.com/download/attachments/1705140/Devoxx...

I received a mail from Devoxx this week that there were already over 3000 registrations, only 150 seats left. When writing this blog post, 1 and a half week before takeoff, the Devoxx site mentions that this year's event is - again - completely sold out! 3200 tickets sold. I guess the exhibition floor will be very crowdy again during the coffee/lunch breaks and gadget hunts.

I just got my access pass in the mail today. The back of the card contains a silver wire: the antenna for RFID. IBM is doing a keynote on RFID and they will be doing measurements on the popularity of talks. So if you walk out of a room in annoyance after 10 minutes, Big Brother Blue as seen it all . The one leaving the most rooms mid-session, will be superglued to his chair next year . Speaking of sticky (key)notes.

Apparently the son of a colleague of mine is involved in the RFID stuff at the conference. This colleague asked my to approach his son, ask him a lot of hard question and conclude that "he seems to know more than his father". I'll have to read the names of all the people at the IBM booth in order to pick the right guy... No, I'm not going to reveil his name!

Now that the schedule should be almost final (as final as can be; last minute changes are always possible, e.g. last years keynote of James Gosling), it is the right moment to revisit the schedule and check whether there are any changes that impact my preferences of a while ago. More on this, later, on ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException.skynetblogs.be

Regular visitors of Javapolis/Devoxx will know Click and Hack, the alter ego's of Joshua Bloch and Neal Gafter, both former Sun employees who joined Google. Neal and Josh are also known for their book Java Puzzlers, of which they've been doing presentations on several conferences around the world, including last year's Javapolis conference.

For those of you who attended this session: remember it very well (you may even keep a shortcut to this blog post as a "memorial" and/or to Parleys: http://www.parleys.com/display/PARLEYS/Home#title=The%20J...), because there will be no more Click and Hack. Why not? Because Neal Gafter left Google. OK, no problem, you may think. It's not because Neal Gafter no longer is a colleague of Josh Bloch that they cannot do presentations together anymore. Wrong! Why? Because Gafter went to Microsoft to join the .Net languages team. Knowing that Microsoft is not the most Java-minded company (.Net languages don't include Java), I guess it is clear that Click & Hack have become "deprecated". According to his blogger profile, he joined the M-company in September.

I remember last year's Javapolis presentation of Josh Bloch about closures. He had an entirely different opinion about closures that Neal Gafter had. Neal already did a short presentation on closures the previous year (Javapolis 2006) Neal's presentation can be found on Parleys: http://www.parleys.com/display/PARLEYS/Home#slide=1;title.... Back then that all seamed reasonable. But after the presentation of Josh Bloch last year (see Parleys: http://www.parleys.com/display/PARLEYS/Home#slide=1;title...), which put an entirly different light on closures, I was... puzzled, to say the least. Immediately after Bloch's presentation Gafter write a reaction on his blog (http://gafter.blogspot.com/2007_12_01_archive.html). This reaction clearly showed there was a tension between Bloch and Gafter regarding closures. Does this have something to do with the reason why Gafter eventually left Google?

Devoxx, formerly known as Javapolis. Dé place to be voor elke Java developer en eenieder die van ver of dichtbij met Java bezig is en een beetje wil bijblijven. BeJUG noemt hun event zelf de Apache van de conferences, omdat ze voor zo weinig geld zoveel informatie kunnen brengen. Je krijgt op een week tijd zoveel informatie dat de kennis-achterstand van het voorbije jaar meteen weer is weggewerkt. Net om die reden ben ik de voorbije 5 jaar steeds naar de full conference gegaan (niet zomaar 2 dagen van ofwel de university days ofwel de conference days). De voorbije 5 jaar is er maar 1 conference geweest dat mijn conference pass niet door de werkgever werd betaald. Toen moesten andere mensen de kans krijgen, was de boodschap. Maar gelukkig was er toen nood aan track hosts (mensen die de tijd van de spreker in de gaten houden, met een micro rondlopen voor vragen uit het publiek, enzovoort) en kon in alsnog zonder kosten naar Javapolis. Het kostte me enkel een week vakantie. Die ene dag dat je dan track host moest zijn, was bovendien nog een grote meevaller, want de onderwerpen die in die zaal aan bod kwamen, waren misschien niet de eerste keuze, maar best interessante onderwerpen.

Aan het management werd die boodschap ook al meermaals duidelijk gemaakt: 1 keer per jaar 5 dagen naar deze conference gaan is een noodzaak om de kennisachterstand opnieuw bij te benen. Halfslachtige oplossingen met het doorgeven van kaarten zijn aan mij niet besteed. Ofwel ga ik de full conference, vanuit het bedrijf, ofwel zorg ik zelf voor mijn inschrijving. Die boodschap werd al bijna 2 jaar geleden gegeven. Want bijblijven is essentieel in een ICT-functie. Daarvan is iedereen overtuigd, ook het hoger management. Maar het is wel de verantwoordelijkheid van de werknemer om hiervoor initiatief te nemen. Absoluut mee eens. Je moet zelf aangeven waarin je interesses liggen en op welk vlak je je kennis bijschaven. Dat kan het management uiteraard niet in jouw plaats beslissen.

Klinkt allemaal heel logisch, tot je een aanvraag indient voor inschrijving voor de full Devoxx conference. Dan blijkt dat de volle 5 dagen niet kunnen worden ingepland, dat 2 dagen het maximum is. En dan moet je kiezen: tussen een - op papier althans - zeer interessant university track en een conference track waarvan de inhoud nog niet bekend is... Dat kan je niet. Je koopt ook geen auto of huis enkel gebaseerd op onvolledige informatie op papier.

Ik heb gekozen om... "niet te kiezen". M.a.w.: ik ga "officieel" (voor de opleidings-statistieken) niet naar Devoxx, dan kan er iemand anders worden blij gemaakt met een (gedeelde) toegangskaart voor 2 dagen. Ik neem die week gewoon vakantie en betaal de conference uit eigen zak.

Vorige week kreeg ik een mail in de bus van Bejug, de Belgian Java Users Group en tevens organisatoren van de grootste onafhankelijke Java-conference in Europa. Tot vorig jaar heette die conference nog Javapolis, omdat dit een conference was over het Java platform en alles wat daarrond hangt en omdat deze al enkele jaren plaats heeft in Metropolis Antwerpen. In een vorige berichtgeving liet Bejug al weten dat ze de conference hernoemd hadden naar Javoxx. De reden werd toen niet gespecificeerd, maar via "radio couloir" was al duidelijk geworden dat Sun er voor iets tussen zat. Blijkbaar zou het "ongeoorloofd gebruik" van de merknaam Java wel eens tot rechtzaken kunnen leiden.

De mail van vorige week kondigde aan dat ze weer van naam moesten veranderen: ook Javoxx bevatte nog 3 van de 4 letters van de merknaam Java. Sun had nochtans "een regeling" voorgesteld, maar de organisatoren zaal daarop niet willen ingaan, omdat ze hun onafhankelijkheid wensten te bewaren. Met andere woorden: als Sun er een eigen event van mag maken, is er geen probleem... Gelukkig was Stephan Jansen slimmer en koos hij voor een andere naam: Devoxx, the voice of the Java "TM" developers.

Naamsverandering of niet: het blijft het jaarlijkse verplichte nummer voor de Java-developer. Ik vraag me alleen af of Sun nu begonnen is aan een heksenjacht. Gaan ze de bakkers en patissiers te lande ook met een rechtzaak afdreigen als ze in hun toonbank "Javanais" hebben liggen??? Ze zullen er eens "smakelijk" lachen...