The event
I had a chat with two of the organizers – Espen Herseth Halvorsen and Anders Karlsen. They could tell me that the interest for Java and Javazone is greater than ever – for the first time ever they sold out on both attendees and exhibitor tickets. There were over 600 submissions for talk which they had to trim down to just under 200 to fit the program. Anders could tell me that was a tedious task in which a lot of good contributions had to be left out. There has been about 50 people from the Javabin user group involved in the organization, in addition to 60 volunteer students helping out with the event.
The speakers don’t get paid to talk here (nor can they pay to get to talk), but that doesn’t stop them from coming back year after year – like Kevlin Henney who’s speaking for the 14th time, only missing out the first event in 2001. Maybe it’s the great and unique atmosphere which Espen talks about – the vibe, the people. Maybe it’s the food, catered by high-esteemed professional from Fursetgruppen. Maybe it’s the Awezone party at the end of day 1 with free beer and a full blown concert. Or maybe it’s the Journeyzone-event the following weekends for the speakers – a trip taking them to unique places in Norway like Svalbard, Besseggen or the coast of Helgeland which is the destination this year.
A chef from Fursetgruppen prepares a combo of Bratwurst and Creole chili sausage
Quality coffee was at an abundance as well – here represented by the guys from Espresso Mobile
The talks
Speaking of Kevlin Henney, his speech at the beginning of day 2 was great. He talked about the (ab)use of the word “Paradigm”, and how they’re really only patterns. And how “there is nothing more dangerous than an idea when you have only one idea.”. There isn’t only Object-Oriented Programming, and there isn’t only Functional Programming. Anyway, I can’t do his talk just in one paragraph – check it out on Vimeo.
Kevlin Henney speaking at Javazone
Other than that, I enjoyed both Hadi Hariri’s talks – the first on The Silver Bullet Syndrome, the second a run-through of the features of the Kotlin JVM language (which is awesome, but not a silver bullet ;). I then focused on architecture talks – Trond Pedersens talk about software architecture in large corporations and Trond Hjorteland’s talk about Microservices and Domain Driven Design were both interesting (talks in Norwegian). I also heard that Sebastian Verheughe from Finn.no held a good talk on Strategic design by architecture and organization, but unfortunately I didn’t get to see that one.
Every single talk is published online though, so that will give me and everybody else a chance to catch up. Check out the Javazone channel. Not only videos from this year, but 5-6 years back. Unfortunately they are not organized by topic or year, but combined with this year’s program you should be able to pick out the ones relevant for you.
The exhibitors
In ending: A few pictures from the exhibitors. As always there’s an unofficial competition in having the most awesome stand. VR was popular this year, with both Knowit and Sopra-Steria showcasing the HTC Vive. Webstep on the other hand, brought an entire modern arcade to their stand with hydraulic-powered multi-player racing game. Cool, but I think I’ll settle for a VR headset in my home.
WebStep with their racing setup
The Ålesund-based company Driw showcasing software for warehouse systems through their remote controlled fork lifts.
Telia had built an entire Internet of Things-city in Lego with an insane amount of features which I won’t even try recite
A guy enjoing a VR-experience at sopra-steria’s stand
The Police were also present. Not to arrest people, but to promote their presence as one of the larger employer of IT-personnel in Norway