Devoxx is over and it’s time for a
summary. We, the Citrus posse ;-), enjoyed the trip to Antwerp very
much and came back with a bunch of new impressions. It was a pleasure
to be part of this Java community event with great speakers and
excellent talks.
We hope you enjoyed our blog posting last week and apologize for all
those typos slipped during living blogging, being absorbed by these
super-comfortable cinema chairs.
We conclude our Devoxx experience for this year with two personal
summaries. See you next year in Antwerp!
One day after the Devoxx in Antwerp it is time for some personal
conclusive thoughts. To put it bluntly in the first place: Devoxx
2010 was brilliant! 3 days filled with awesome talks on Java
technologies and so much fun on and after the official program. This
was my first Java conference and it held so many impressions for me
that i hope to get all of them pointed out in this summary:
What was the most impressive talk from technical perspective? I
listened to so many great talks and if I need to pick one I think for
me it was Chet Haase and Romain Guy talking about Android development
with tips and tricks on performance and memory issues on mobile
devices. I wish I had seen the Vaadin talk too because I heard so much
good things about it, but I think I catch this one up on Parleys some
time.
The most impressive speaker was definitely Stephen Colebourne talking
about the next big language on the JVM. His style of talking and
presentation was done so well - brilliant. He was also very funny and
precisely on “The future of Java” discussion panel.
So now some thoughts on less impressive talks and things on Devoxx for
me. Unfortunately Jan Algermissen could not meet my expectations on
his talk about testing RESTful WebServices. As I have already pointed
out during my summary on this talk he was totally lacking of practical
aspects in my opinion. Another disappointing point was the quality of
food offered during the main lunch break. The free soft drinks were
great, the breakfast was also good, the french fries in long-term
perspective a challenge for the digestion but also great taste, but
the lunch was not very tasty and not filling for the rest of the day.
What else to say about my first Devoxx conference? Yeah the Hotel:
Holiday Inn Express - great! Antwerp city itself - not seen very much,
unfortunately, but we found some good bars and restaurants and people
were always very nice to us. Summing up I am really excited now to
learn more about the technologies presented in Antwerp this
year. Shortly named these are Android, Camel, Hadoop and Scala. I hope
to get the chance to repeat this experience next year.
Almost forgot a very important point: Now after the Devoxx I feel with
all the female persons in this world. Huh? Yeah, Devoxx told me how it
feels to desperately stand in line waiting for a free toilette space
while the opposite gender is walking by with a big smile on their
faces entering the widely open female toilette booths. Ladys, hope you
enjoyed this reverse situation.
Devoxx was the first Java conference I visited and it was definitely
worth it. The two and a half days where packed with superb keynotes
and talks. Both, my interest and personal schedule were quite client
side focused before the conference. But the keynotes on Wednesday
concerning the future of Java SE, the state of the web and especially
the talk about the “Next Big JVM Language” changed that a bit towards
these topics. The latter was overall the best talk I attended. A very
exciting topic and a brilliant presentation by Stephen Colebourne my
new Java hero.
The best technical talk however was about a client side topic “Android
UI Development: Tips, Tricks, and Techniques” by Chet Haase and Romain
Guy. Chet Haase was much better than a day before when he talked about
Flex. Maybe that was because he left Adobe and joined the Googel
Android team recently ;-)
The talk about HTML5 WebSocket was the most inspiring one for me. I
couldn’t go to bed on Sunday before I tried out a small WebSocket
example. WebSockets keep spinning in my head since Devoxx.
The best thing about visiting the conference is that I feel much more
“up to date” now and the worst is that there are too many things to
take a closer look at and way too little time for it. My todo list has
some new items on it - WebSocket, Scala, Android - and I have some new
people I follow on twitter. I hope that ConSol is buying a Parleys
subscription to allow me to see some talks I missed at Devoxx.
It has been a pleasure to be in Antwerp with five of my colleagues. We
learnt a lot and had a lot of fun with french fries and Belgian table
football. Looking forward to next year.
