Developer Champion
Posts about Conferences, User Group Events, and other gatherings.
Having been back in London for a few days I've had some time to digest the madness that was last week.
My lasting impression of JavaOne is almost entirely positive. Granted, it was my first major conference, so maybe I'm just not jaded yet. But let me tell you what I loved about it (yes, I did cover some of these in my last post):
Here's a photo of me representing LMAX as I pick up the Duke Award we won for the Disruptor (Thanks to Martijn for taking the photo)
So I've been at JavaOne for the better part of three days, it's time to record some of my observations so far:
So, I'm off to JavaOne next week!
This is an unexpected and very pleasant surprise. I'll be there with Martin (of the Disruptor fame), and Martijn (that's not going to get confusing at all). Martin will be talking about the Disruptor on Thursday, and Martijn is busy talking about... everything. Most importantly for the LJC he's representing us in our shiny new JCP Executive Committee role.
I'm really looking forward to meeting pretty much anyone and everyone who'll talk to me. It's the first international conference I've been to and I'm hoping to meet people I wouldn't normally get a chance to see in London. It's also really cool to be able to represent both LMAX and the London Java Community. Hopefully it won't lead to some sort of split personality syndrome.
Almost more excitingly, I'll be doing a spot of shopping in New York on the way there and back. Because, well, it would be rude to fly over to the States and not drop in on my old home.
Maybe I'll get a chance to catch up with some of you in one of those amazing cities...?
On Wednesday I tagged along to the STAC London Summit to provide backup for Mike, who was on the "The Future of Messaging Middleware" panel.
The panel consisted of two messaging providers, one hardware (Solace Systems) and one software (29West/Informatica), and two "users", Citihub and LMAX. Obviously both providers were arguing that theirs was the best solution. But what I found interesting is that I came away with the impression that everyone was really on the same side - everyone wants to use or to provide the best system, but there are different approaches. Which one you adopt is likely to be influenced by how your team work and the hardware you have (or can obtain).
I attended TradeTech last week, an annual event about Equities and Derivatives trading. I assumed from the title that there would be a reasonable focus on technology, but I found it was more “Trade” and less “Tech”.
Continue reading "TradeTech 2011 – Not like a developer conference"
Last Thursday I was fortunate enough to get a place on the FogBugz and Kiln World Tour. I booked it before I moved jobs, and I'll be honest I had no real interest in the software. I've been reading Joel's books and blogs since my friend Brent bought me Joel on Software and made me read it (he had the foresight to know I'd want to hang on to his copy if he'd lent it to me!). I wanted to see the man in the flesh and hear what he had to say about his software. Because really, do we honestly need yet another bug-tracking / project-management tool?
This is just a summary of the points I took from the Lean conference at Bletchley. They all need expanding, this is just the stuff that struck me that I want to record.
Continue reading "Lean Software and Systems Conference 2010 (Bletchley Park)"
(Updated 15 Dec 2020 with correct completed status!)
(Update: 15 Dec 2020: Huh. I did OK with these over the following decade...)
Last week saw the first QCon London conference, an event "designed with the technical depth and enterprise focus of interest to technical team leads, architects, and project managers".
The conference consisted of two days of tutorials followed by three days of talks covering technologies, vendor products, and processes. In addition there were numerous "networking" opportunities with plenty of break times to both absorb information and meet other people, plus evening events.
The conference was both comprehensive and absorbing, and I'm hoping to take the next few days to filter through the notes I have taken and present a more succinct version here. Whether it will be of use to anyone other than myself remains to be seen...