Devoxx - Wrap-up
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!
Christoph’s Summary
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.
Torsten’s Conclusion
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.
