Sights and Sounds Of The IndicThreads.com Conference On Java Technology
The IndicThreads.com Conference On Java Technology was a great success. Really feels good to say that 🙂
As this was the first independent conference on Java to happen in India, we had nothing to compare with and no way to predict what the response would be like. As they say, if there’s no competition, maybe there’s no business at all. Fortunately this adage did not work in our case and over 150 people attended the event.
There were some hiccups but overall the conference went smoothly. The audience was just great. Q&As discussions, debates… it was all there. We were a little circumspect about having 10 hours of Java on day 1, but even for the late evening sessions there was admirable enthusiasm and interest.
Our sponsors – Oracle, Pramati, Microsoft, Persistent, SAS, BMC software and Canoo were all very supportive. They understood that the core idea behind the event was to keep it focused on learning and on being vendor-neutral. So there was never any interference in any of our plans for the conference. The speakers also stayed well away from any marketing pitches and product promotions. It was just technology all the way.
Day 1 started with a quick introduction to what was planned and to the facilities available. The first session by Raghu Kodali talked of SOA, BPEL and Rules. Atul Kahate followed with a talk on Java Security dos and dont’s. He kept things simple and pointed out some mistakes often committed in enterprise Java applications.
Janakiram MSV from Microsoft spoke about interoperability between J2EE and .NET. A Microsoft guy at a Java conference might seem a bit strange, but the talk brought information that Java guys wouldn’t hear otherwise. Debu Panda had a fun session on EJB3, which was followed by Peter JTrac Thomas’ session on Spring.
To recharge the participants’ energy for later sessions, we then had a beautiful dance performance from the NrutyaVardhini cultural academy in Pune.
Kishore Kumar, the author of “Pro Apache Geronimo” spoke about Apache Geronimo and the day ended with my introductory session on Groovy and Grails.
Day 2 opened with a typical Gavin King session which included blasting established notions of enterprise development and dancing on stage. His session on using JSF, EJB3 and Seam was fun and informative.
Later Janak Mulani spoke about RIA alternatives. He compared taking a Java Swing, HTML-JavaScript and a Flash based approach. Sanjeeb Sahoo help demystify Java EE 5 by highlighting the differences between J2EE and Java EE. We then had a session on Ruby and Rails presented by Jatender Singh. Since there is so much of Ruby happening, the session, as we hoped, shed light on what Rails is all about. Day 2 ended with a panel discussion on Ajax and Web2.0 and their adoption across enterprises, the value they bring to a web app, the successful ongoing Ajax projects and lots more. The panelists were Swarraj Kulkarni who is the Principal Architect at Cognizant and Vinod Kulkarni who is the heads the Web2.0 Competency Center at Persistent.
Do have a look at the Conference Program Guide. The conference presentations and videos will be up on the site soon. You can find photos from the conference at Flickr
Rest assured that once the team gets back from their break, we will get down to planning the “QThreads.com Conference On Software Quality 2007” and the “IndicThreads.com Conference On Java Technology 2007”. See you there.
The feedback forms were optional as our experience suggests that people forced to give feedback either waste the paper and dump it or scribble things they haven’t quite thought over.
Hotel in renovation – Sorry about that. The renovation was supposed to end 2 months back. By the time we knew that the hotel won’t be in the expected 5-star shape, it was too late. We tried our best and pushed hard to get the best facilities at the venue. Another one of our many learnings from the event.
We did have wi-fi.
We considered going for a call for papers approach but preferred going with invited speakers for this year.
I am not sure as regards terming the Seam presentation by Gavin as commercial. You are right that JBoss is driving the Seam effort. But Eclipse, NetBeans, Hibernate, Tomcat, Geronimo, Harmony…there are 10’s of open, free and popular software that are primarily driven by one company. However your point is taken and will be a matter for consideration for our next event.
We should have more such events in India. My company Xebia (www.xebia.com) is a very active member of Netherlands Java Users Group (NL-JUG). It amazes me to see how we can enrich each other’s knowledge by such interactions. Javapolis, which has become no. 1 Java event in Europe, has been started by Belgium Java Users Group. I think we have enough mass in India but no momentum. I would like to encourage such events and hope to see a similar event in New Delhi soon.
Anurag Shrivastava
[URL=http://www.xebia.com]Xebia[/URL]
[URL=http://www.xebia.in]Xebia India : No.1 in Agile Offshore [/URL]
It was the first conference of its kind in India so the Harshad and him team deserves appreciation. I am aware how hard it is to get companies and individuals behind knowledge sharing initiatives in India.
This seminar though painfully reflected our low level of maturity in organizing this kind of events. So here is my criticism:
1. A hotel and under renovation as a conference venue. Aren’t there better places in Pune?
2. No wi-fi access free or against payment. You have deprived techies of Oxygen in a Technology conference.
3. Ringing cellphones and some people were even answering phone calls during the sessions.
4. Loot for OpenOffice CD. Stuff that you can download anyway.
5. Very-very boring presentation from Sun from a otherwise a nice guy Sanjeeb Kumar Sahoo. Sanjeeb find a better company to work for. Your story was so boring.
6. Filling up feedback forms was optional. I think if you are organizing the seminar for the first time, you should appreciate the value of feedback. Abroad when people return filled up feedback form they get a small gift/souvenir. This is a way to make sure that majority returns the filled up feedback forms.
7. Very opaque policy about the selection of speakers. No wonder that we were treated with outdated topics such as EJB 3.0 and Java 5 etc.
[QUOTE] he speakers also stayed well away from any marketing pitches and product promotions. It was just technology all the way [/QUOTE]
8. Gavin King was so obviously commercial in his session about Jseam. How did you fail to notice that?
9. Lunches were good and overwhelming at times. Selection of beverages was limited, and hot drinks reminded me that Pune is in the sugar belt.
10. Great dance performance.
11. Annoying quiz by SSA. Not the quiz questions but the way it was conducted and stinginess about giving out the prizes.
[URL=http://shahharshal.blogspot.com/2006/12/is-information-technology-maturing.html]Harshal Shah’s Blog[/URL]
[URL=http://bmraoblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/indicthreadscom-conference-on-java.html]BM Rao Blog about the conference[/URL]
IBM I think will now play an even bigger role than Sun in driving Java development. Sun anyway it is said doesn’t make much money from Java, should Sun should be ok.