TSSJS Vegas 2010 Round-Up

Speaking at TSSJS Vegas this year was great. I got to do four talks - my Java EE 6 overview, a Resin demo, a CanDI/CDI demo as well as a talk on the JCP. The Resin talk was one of the keynotes for TSSJS. All talks were well attended and the crowd was great.

People seemed genuinely interested in Java EE 6, the Web Profile, CDI and Resin. I got a ton of questions for Q&A, one-on-one afterwards as well as at the Caucho booth. Folks were particularly interested in some of the CDI/EJB 3.1 features as well as the Resin portable extensions for JUnit, iBATIS, Quartz, using EJB annotations on managed beans, etc. A good number of people asked for the example code both for the CanDI and Resin demo talks (both demos have been posted on the Caucho site already).

I personally enjoyed taking about the importance of open participation in the JCP although it was a relatively short and non-technical talk. Attendees at the talk asked some very intelligent questions and showed a great deal of engagement/interest, which was very heartening. I also got to talk to a few EJB 3 in Action readers as well as TSS readers, which is always fantastic.

CDI Talk at NYC JUG

I did a CDI talk at the NYC JUG on January 26. The crowd was great as I had expected from talking at the JUG in the past. It was great to see JUG leader and friend Dario doing a fantastic job of constantly growing this JUG from it's humble beginnings. I look forward to speaking at the JUG again soon, perhaps on Resin or OSGi/Java modularity.

Speaking at TSSJS Europe, 2009

On October 27-28, I spoke at TSSJS Europe 2009 in Prague, Czech Republic. I did an EJB 3.1 Preview as well as my Spring/EJB 3 integration talk. Both talks went well and were well-attended. The attendance for TSSJS Europe itself seemed to be a little on the low-end - hopefully that will change as the EU economy slowly recovers.

While in Prague, I was invited to talk to the NetBeans team led by Petr Jiricka. We exchanged ideas on adding better support for JSF 2, JPA 2, CDI and EJB 3.1 for NetBeans. After talking with the NetBeans team, I finally gave NetBeans an honest spin and was very impressed by it compared to the IDE I have been using for a few years. Indeed, I am now using NetBeans quite happily, although I am yet to try out the latest version of IDEA to see how it compares.

Speaking at Java2Days, Bulgaria

On October 8-9, 2009 I spoke at Java2Days in Sofia, Bulgaria. I got to do four different talks - my Java EE 6 Overview, an EJB 3.1 Preview, my EJB 3/Spring integration talk as well as my JPA/database performance optimization talk. The crowd was great and it was great to try and reach out to Java developers in Eastern Europe. This was the first time this conference was organized and I think it was truly a success. Just in terms of attendance, they surpassed some of the US based conferences, not to mention the enthusiasm level of the attendees.

The Bulgarians, including organizers Emo, Eva and Yoana were excellent hosts. Bulgaria truly is a rapidly flourishing country with a long, proud history, a vibrant multicultural community and a rich, colorful cultural tapestry. I look forward to speaking at Java2Days and Eastern Europe in general in the future. It was most definitely both a privilege and an honor to speak in a gem of a country emerging from behind the Iron Curtain.

It was also great to spend some time with my fellow co-presenters and friends Josh Long, Talip Ozturk, John Willis, Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine, Rob Harrop of SpringSource, Heath Kesler and Andrew Lombardi.