Developer Champion
Posts about Conferences, User Group Events, and other gatherings.
Today I'm experimenting with something new. Given how much I'm working with videos these days, I thought I'd do a short video about the conferences and events I'll be at between now and the end of 2024.
Continue reading "Trisha’s Events, Autumn 2024"
It's been a while since I wrote a conference write up. The short version of "why" is because I got a bit bored of doing it. Plus, I found I was attending conferences as a speaker "on the circuit", and my experience of hanging out, catching up with my friends, chatting to other attendees to see what they're up to and so forth, didn't seem as useful to share with people who might want to find out whether a conference is worth attending from a content or atmosphere point of view.
But I feel compelled to blog about JavaZone. I presented there back in 2013, but every year since then haven't made it for one reason or another (the fact that it's near my birthday in no way impacts my scheduling…). I made the effort this year, and I'm so pleased. Now I've been to many more conferences, of various sizes, various themes, all around the world, and I can definitely state that JavaZone is up there as one of the best conferences around.
Why?
Last night was the final get-together to discuss the Java 8 MOOC. Any event hosted in August in a city that is regularly over 40°C is going to face challenges, so it was great that we had attendees from earlier sessions plus new people too.
As I mentioned last week, the Sevilla Java User Group is working towards completing the Java 8 MOOC on lambdas and streams. We're running three sessions to share knowledge between people who are doing the course.
The Sevilla Java User Group is working together towards completing the Java 8 MOOC on lambdas and streams. As part of this, we're running three sessions during the course so we can, as a group, ask questions about the lectures, get help with the homework, and (if we're feeling very smart!) help people who may be struggling (or might not have watched the videos).
You may have noticed that the more I go to conferences, the less I write about them. I could claim lack of time, but the fact is that all my write-ups will be something along the lines of "Loved <city>, went to talks that made me think, met interesting people, gave a talk or two that seemed to go well". Not sure if people get bored of reading that, but I get bored of writing it.
That's not to say I'm bored of conferences. On the contrary - since I work from home, travelling to new places and meeting Real Human Beings keeps me sane. Plus conferences are fun.
But I went to a conference on Saturday that makes me feel compelled to write something, and not just because it was organised by my two fellow Sevilla JUG organisers. @IsraKaos and @RGDav are both doing more Android day-to-day than server-side Java, so this is an area they're interested in learning more about. Not content with organising Android events every other month, they decided they had so many interesting speakers they wanted to have speaking here in Sevilla that they wanted to run a whole day, single track conference, on behalf of GDG Sevilla. Android Xtended was born.
I think living in a beautiful city in a fantastic climate has its advantages. Not just the obvious ones, but we find people unusually keen to come and visit us on the pretence of presenting at the Sevilla Java User Group (and please, DO come and present at our JUG, we love visitors).
This week we were really lucky, we had Georges Saab and Aurelio Garcia-Ribeyro giving us an update on where Java is now and where it looks like it's going in the future.
<em>TL;DR MongoDB London, 6th November, 50% off with discount code 50Trisha.
So, MongoDB London is nearly upon us again, and I’m dead disappointed I can’t make it this year (I’m [keynoting at GOTO Berlin] (http://gotocon.com/berlin-2014/presentation/Party%20Keynote:%20Staying%20Ahead%20of%20the%20Curve) instead, which I’m terrified, I mean, excited, about). The last MongoDB London was really interesting for me - I was fairly new to the company, I’d been here less than six months, and it was a really great way to go both broad and deep on the technology.
I was trying to find a blog post where I talked about my experiences, but it looks like I only wrote that In My Mind. In fact, I only only wrote two whole lines of notes on the conference. But 18 months later I clearly remember presentations from my colleagues Ross and Derick demonstrating the geo capabilities in MongoDB, presentations which heavily influenced the live coding demo I’ve been giving recently.
I also remember Eliot’s presentation - Eliot is one of those people who totally gets away with breaking the “speak in a measured, clear fashion” presenters rule, he fires fascinating information at you at high speed and it’s actually one of the compelling things about his talks. If you ever get a chance to see him talk about the product, it’s totally worth it.
Other than that, the most awesome thing about the conference was the chance to meet, and talk to, a bunch of different MongoDB people - there are the engineers who work on the product (like me and my colleagues); the people leading the way with the technology, like Eliot; and finally, but for me most importantly, you get to meet really interesting people who are using MongoDB in ways that you might not even imagine.
Anyway the point of this sales pitch is, whether you’re using MongoDB already or you’re keen to find out about it, MongoDB London is only going to take a day from your life, and you’ll learn a bunch of interesting things. And, with a Special Discount Code from me, it’s only £45! Sign up with code 50Trisha.
Well, I'm at JavaOne again, and after only one day I've already learnt stuff. And, of course, had a great time catching up with interesting people. Here's a summary of the first day.
At GOTO Chicago, I was given the chance to chat a bit about the presentation I was giving, which happens to be the same one I’m giving at a number of conferences this year (although of course I’m evolving it as I go along).
The presentation leaves very little time for anything other than coding, as it’s quite challenging to create a full app in 50 minutes, so it was great to have the chance to talk about the motivations for the demo
<div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;"> <iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sZee7lRAUF4" style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;" allowfullscreen title="YouTube Video">
The video of the actual talk is also available now:
<div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;"> <iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kmVnhyWqozA" style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;" allowfullscreen title="YouTube Video">
At the beginning it doesn’t clearly show the screen, but it does improve. You can see an earlier version from the Joy of Coding as well, so if something’s not clear on one of the videos, hopefully it’s better in the other.
The code for the Chicago version is on Github, and if you look through the history you can see how it builds up, the same as it does in the demo.