Happenings @ IndicThreads.com Conference On Java Technology 2007
Action began well before the 26th, with many speakers and delegates arriving in Pune and checking in to conference hotels. Registrations also kept coming in till the very last minute.
Day 1 began with me welcoming the audience and presenting the Java quiz for the day. Prayank Swaroop then took over and spoke about building RIA applications using Flex. This session was very well received as there’s already a lot of uncertainty in the RIA space and that has been heightened since Adobe Flex has come up as a strong contender.
The conference this year had 2 tracks so as to give delegates more choice.
We had beefed up Spring presence based on the feedback from previous year and Spring continued to get a good response. Considering that most developers at least have basic knowledge of Spring, we were uncertain about what response the 2 1/2 hrs "from scratch" Spring Tutorial would get. The response easily exceeded our expectations. Vadiraja Bhatt from Sybase next spoke about the company’s ASE 15 DB and it’s features for Java development.
Lunch on day 1 is always a crucial mark to cross. Considering that we had participants from many cities across India we had tried to make the buffet one that would appeal to the varying tastes of India. I think it did.
The Microsoft session brought to Java developers content that they would never hear otherwise. The speaker, Pandurang Nayak’s quick poll to check how many of the audience develop using .NET got about 2 people responding.
Spring and EJB3 was up next. Although many would like us to think that these technologies only complement each other, in reality Spring and EJB3 regularly compete with each other when projects are deciding which path to take. Debu Panda, the author of EJB3 In Action gave a comparison of Spring and EJB3 which would help projects decide their architecture.
The booths area had a bookstore apart from the Rightrix and the RedHat booth. The store sold some author signed copies of Debu’s book in pretty quick time after his session.
With so many web frameworks around, you are never sure if a particular one really has users interested or is just one of the many contenders. The response to the Wicket session showed that Wicket was emerging as a good alternative to the established frameworks. Karthik emphaised that JSF cannot be considered the best option only because it’s a standard.
The last sessions of the day dealt with JSF and Ajax strategies in one hall and with Grid Enabling JEE Apps delivered by Asif Shahid in the other. Chris Schalk had traveled around the world and come in only a few hours before his session. He did a great job of discussing JSF and Ajax without showing any signs of jet lag. Thus ended day 1.
Day 2 began with Ramesh Loganathan talking of incorporating social networking concepts into enterprise applications. Samisa Abeysinghe from the Apache Axis team in Sri Lanka spoke about the design and usage of Axis 2.
Right after lunch was Swarraj Kulkarni presenting on Enterprise Mashups. He got the audience attention by starting with some lively and interesting insights into the history of Mashups. He went on to present a structured session that dealt with the need and growth of Mashups to the opportunities presented by the emergence of mashups. Amit Bhayani from Red Hat next talked about the emerging open source Java VOIP platform and JSR 240.
Over the two days of the conference Paulo Caroli spoke about Refactoring, Continuous Integration and also had an Agile Q & A. His sessions seemed to connect very well with much of the audience facing tough integration and release issues in their everyday work.
As Peter Thomas had to head back to Bangalore due to personal reasons, Chris Schalk took up the last session of day 2 and spoke about developing Ajax interfaces using GWT.
The Q&A during sessions as well as my interactions with delegates suggested that surprisingly there’s still as much interest and uncertainty about Ajax as their was a year back.
The conference end in sight, it was time to announce the Java Quiz Winners. The conference concluded with a vote of thanks from Sangeets to the delegates and speakers.
While most things went as per plan, despite our best efforts we could not get Wi-Fi going as the setup at the venue sprung some surprises. Also we were forced to make some changes to the schedule at the last minute. We definitely will take this learning into next year although covering for last minute speaker changes is always going to be difficult.
Below are the presentations from the conference. The missing ones will be added shortly. Details of the speakers and sessions at the conference can be found at http://conference.indicthreads.com
Presentations
- Introduction to Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) and Adobe Flex
- Enterprise 2.0: Bringing Web2.0 Collaboration and Social networking to Enterprise applications
- Refactoring to Patterns – a practical look into the Agile approach on Evolutionary Design
- Keynote – Living with Heterogeneity – Bridging the Microsoft and Java worlds
- Spring and EJB 3: All-Star Team or Neighbors with Good Fences?
- Component based Java Web development with Apache Wicket
- JSF and Ajax: An update on the latest strategies for building Ajax applications with JavaServer Faces
- Grid enabling Data Intensive JEE applications
- Sybase ASE 15 ‘Operational Excellence Exemplified’
- Wicket, Tapestry and JSF side by side
- Effectively Taming SOA Chaos
- Web services for human beings – Axis2
- Spring Tutorial One & Two – Workshop Code – Code Readme
- How to make your Ajax applications go offline
- Enterprise Mashups – Opportunities and Challenges!
- Open Source VoIP Platform – JAIN SLEE JSR -240
- Complementing Unit Test with Dependency Injection and Mock Objects
- Building User interfaces using GWT
- Conitnuous Integration and Agile Q&A
