JavaBlackBelt @ Øredev08
posted by Nicolas Brasseur
Last week the other Nicolas and I were invited to the Øredev08 conference in Sweden to demonstrate our JavaBlackBelt platform and spread the word to the Swedish community. This was actually a double-first for me: first times at Øredev and in Sweden - and I sincerely hope not the last time for either! The experience was so worth it that I decided to share it with you.
The con
ference
Unlike most of the other conferences I attend, Øredev is cross-technology, mixing tracks such as classic Java, .NET, Agile and Mobile tracks with more exotic subjects such as Domain-Driven Design, Aspects of Leadership, PM in Practice, User Experience and more. I like conferences where you have the opportunity to meet people active outside Java: it's
always enriching to share ideas and vision with someone from a different viewpoint. The conference was held in Malmö, a nice city in the southern part of Sweden 20 minutes away from Copenhagen.So, for a week the city streets were festooned with old style space invaders () indicating the way to the conference center.
The venue was nice but is being torn down soon, so next year the conference will be held elsewhere. I hope the organizing team manages to book the strange Turning Torso of Malmö.
Another unique characteristic is the conference's sense of social responsibility:
The Talks I attended
I couldn't attend many sessions, as I was often at the booth with Nicolas, welcoming people and informing them about our community. The first day I managed to get away and see the following speeches:
I also heard a lot of good things about:
Jonas and Ric of Kaazing were giving away nice t-shirts promoting their new gateway techn
ology. As I told them, I believe what they have done is the future of the web and I strongly advise anyone involved in RIA development to have a look at it. If you are currently using Comet or similar technologies, consider the Kaazing gateway as another solution. While the HTML 5 spec is not yet released (planned for 2022, joked Jonas), its 'communication' section, which introduces 2 new core features: Server-Sent Events and WebSockets, is already well-defined.
Quote from the Kaazing website:
Server-sent events standardizes and formalizes how a continuous stream of data can be sent from a server to a browser. Server-sent events is designed to enhance native, cross-browser streaming. Server-sent events introduces eventsource, a new HTML DOM element that connects to a server URL to receive an event stream. The HTML 5 Web sockets specification introduces the WebSocket interface, which defines a full-duplex communications channel that operates over a single socket. WebSocket:
What the Kaazing team provides is
The Oracle booth was serving strong expressos and cappuccinos. One friendly Oracle guy named Olaf Heimburger took the JBB contest and complained about a question, but I wasn't at the booth at the time to argue about it. I was happy to see him come back later to admit that actually the question was correct and that JavaBlackBelt had taught him something, which is exactly our aim. That's a mantra you must all have in mind when writing questions/explanations on JavaBlackBelt: What am I teaching the guy reading this?
We decided to do t-shirt cross-referencing so he now wears a JavaBlackBelt polo and I am the proud owner of an Oracle red t-shirt.
The community
Talking about you guys, the community was well represented at Øredev. I met auction-winner Mateusz Kwasniewski and Dejan Vukmirovic who helped us on the booth. We had nice chats about the community and the future of the website and even interviewed Mateusz (article coming soon). There were also a lot of members from JetWay, one of the organizing partners. Lots of them took the JavaBlackBelt contest, so I guess that this week their offices are full of people proudly wearing their hard-earned JavaBlackBelt t-shirts.
Pictures can be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/JavaBlackBelt.Admin/Oredev2008 and embedded at the end of this post.
The Organizing Team
I can't end this article without warmly thanking Emilie and Michael, the core organizers, for the amazing event they have successfully set up. Thank you very much and I hope to see you next year at Øredev09.
Parting Advice
One last piece of advice: next year bid on the auction to win the free entrance and join us at Øredev09!
The con
ferenceUnlike most of the other conferences I attend, Øredev is cross-technology, mixing tracks such as classic Java, .NET, Agile and Mobile tracks with more exotic subjects such as Domain-Driven Design, Aspects of Leadership, PM in Practice, User Experience and more. I like conferences where you have the opportunity to meet people active outside Java: it's
always enriching to share ideas and vision with someone from a different viewpoint. The conference was held in Malmö, a nice city in the southern part of Sweden 20 minutes away from Copenhagen.So, for a week the city streets were festooned with old style space invaders () indicating the way to the conference center.The venue was nice but is being torn down soon, so next year the conference will be held elsewhere. I hope the organizing team manages to book the strange Turning Torso of Malmö.
Another unique characteristic is the conference's sense of social responsibility:
- The exhibitor's fund-raising for the UNICEF collected 190.000 SEK, enough to build 2-3 schools in Malawi.
- Plates, cups and cutlery were made of banana leaves, corn and other recyclable materials.
- Fair-trade coffee
- ...
The Talks I attended
I couldn't attend many sessions, as I was often at the booth with Nicolas, welcoming people and informing them about our community. The first day I managed to get away and see the following speeches:
- Five Aspects You've Never Heard About : Alef Arendsen demonstrated uncommon uses of AOP. The talk was interesting but there was a lot of code and little time in which to read it, so we only reviewed 3 out of 5 of the planned aspects. He later confessed to me that the talk normally ran 90 minutes. He promised to post a blog entry about it on the SpringSource blog.
- Qi4j - code, examples and demo : Qi4j is basically a framework that aims to make it easier to create applications using DDD. Not being not familiar with this technology I must admit I did not understand the whole thing but I met Niclas Hedhman on the last day and he explained more about this promising framework. Niclas is CEO of code dragons, a Malaysian company that seems to be highly skilled in OSGi and DDD.
- Benchmarks Puzzlers - K.Pepperdine : Borrowing the Bloch/Gafter style (minus the overalls) to show some interesting examples of benchmarks that seem valid but aren't.
- Real-time web development - J.Jacobi : Jonas (former Oracle employee) showed his new baby : the Kaazing Gateway explaining how it is possible, using the HTML 5 specification, to have full-duplex TCP connections between browsers and middleware. I must say this talk made me feel as I had years ago at TSSS Las Vegas when I saw my first Ajax demo by Dion Almaer : a revolution is coming. Kaazing's booth was next to our's so we chatted with them a lot (see below).
I also heard a lot of good things about:
- The groovy patterns talk : I'm really bummed I missed this one - I've wanted to use Groovy for years, but I've never convinced any customers, for lack of business examples. It seems that this talk had the answers to all my questions. I hope it will be available online soon. (By the way most the sessions were recorded so we can hope).
- The DDD workshop on Thursday given by Eric Evans of course
- And an excellent Agile workshop given by Diana Larsen, an active member of the agile alliance.
Jonas and Ric of Kaazing were giving away nice t-shirts promoting their new gateway techn
ology. As I told them, I believe what they have done is the future of the web and I strongly advise anyone involved in RIA development to have a look at it. If you are currently using Comet or similar technologies, consider the Kaazing gateway as another solution. While the HTML 5 spec is not yet released (planned for 2022, joked Jonas), its 'communication' section, which introduces 2 new core features: Server-Sent Events and WebSockets, is already well-defined.Quote from the Kaazing website:
Server-sent events standardizes and formalizes how a continuous stream of data can be sent from a server to a browser. Server-sent events is designed to enhance native, cross-browser streaming. Server-sent events introduces eventsource, a new HTML DOM element that connects to a server URL to receive an event stream. The HTML 5 Web sockets specification introduces the WebSocket interface, which defines a full-duplex communications channel that operates over a single socket. WebSocket:
- Traverses firewalls and routers seamlessly
- Allows authorized cross-domain communication
- Integrates with cookie-based authentication
- Integrates with existing HTTP load balancers
What the Kaazing team provides is
- a client library for the browser to simplify client-side development of full-duplex applications.
- a gateway implementation that transfers the TCP/HTTP full duplex to middleware protocols.
The Oracle booth was serving strong expressos and cappuccinos. One friendly Oracle guy named Olaf Heimburger took the JBB contest and complained about a question, but I wasn't at the booth at the time to argue about it. I was happy to see him come back later to admit that actually the question was correct and that JavaBlackBelt had taught him something, which is exactly our aim. That's a mantra you must all have in mind when writing questions/explanations on JavaBlackBelt: What am I teaching the guy reading this?
We decided to do t-shirt cross-referencing so he now wears a JavaBlackBelt polo and I am the proud owner of an Oracle red t-shirt.
The community
Talking about you guys, the community was well represented at Øredev. I met auction-winner Mateusz Kwasniewski and Dejan Vukmirovic who helped us on the booth. We had nice chats about the community and the future of the website and even interviewed Mateusz (article coming soon). There were also a lot of members from JetWay, one of the organizing partners. Lots of them took the JavaBlackBelt contest, so I guess that this week their offices are full of people proudly wearing their hard-earned JavaBlackBelt t-shirts.
Pictures can be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/JavaBlackBelt.Admin/Oredev2008 and embedded at the end of this post.
The Organizing Team
I can't end this article without warmly thanking Emilie and Michael, the core organizers, for the amazing event they have successfully set up. Thank you very much and I hope to see you next year at Øredev09.
Parting Advice
One last piece of advice: next year bid on the auction to win the free entrance and join us at Øredev09!
Labels: conference, oredev, Sweden
