Javazone 2011

From Sept 7th to 8th I attended Javazone, a technical conference targeted towards developers and professionals with interests in Information Technology in the Scandinavia region.  This year's venue was at Oslo Spektrum, the same venue as the Top Gear event that was held earlier this year.

Each attendee was issued a 3.5 inch floppy disk (remember those days?) with a QR code.  You could take your disk to a special computer at a booth and check if you won anything.

I remember when Windows 3.11 came on 10 of these disks!

Day one's program - Technical sessions till 6pm followed by a party which starts at 7pm held at the Rockefeller music hall.

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Each session is roughly an hour with 20 minute breaks before the next session.  There were also lightning talks, which consist of a collection of 4 short technical talks crammed into an hour.  These were all in Norwegian unfortunately, which is mostly okay since most attendees are Scandinavian unless you're an ignorant foreigner which I am. :)  Most of the talks ranged from okay to very good to incomprehensible if you do not understand Norwegian.  This is the first technical conference that I've ever attended which did not have completely English talks.  The others I've attended are Apple WWDC in San Francisco and YOW! in Brisbane Australia.

You can watch all technical sessions recorded at vimeo.  I'm in one of the Kent Beck videos from Day two.

The sessions that I attended on day one were:

• Mythbusters: Javascript edition - good beginner level introduction
• Lightning talks (Even the code was in Norwegian :)) - not good if you do not understand Norwegian
• Complexity Theory and Software Development - Interesting and worth attending
• HTML 5 fact and fiction - good introduction to what HTML 5 is about
• Regex - The future programming - This was really a Regex tutorial, I was very disappointed
• Javascript design and architecture - More intermediate to advanced Javascript stuff
• Usability 101 - good introduction and why you don't really want developers without a UI background designing UIs. :)
• The art of garbage collector tuning for the SUN/Oracle JVM - Interesting and worth attending.  It's not practical to me since I work mainly now with C# but it was very interesting nonetheless.

Technical talks are usually hit and miss.  But generally the American speakers are better than the non American ones.  I'm really not biased when I say that!

Here's photos from the venue.

Cisco booth smack bang in the middle

The food was pretty good, and there was no shortage of food.  I had sushi, tandoori chicken, ice cream, chicken caesar salad, beef with potatoes and that was all in the one day!  There was also plenty of coffee and other drinks.  No alcohol was served until the last technical session was over.

There was an American band that played in the morning however I did not know who they were.  They had just finished performing when I took this photo.

After the talks we walked to the Rockefeller music hall and watched some bands play including Cisco's.

Here's the Cisco band.  The other band above is from a different company.

CC Cowboys, they're Norwegian.  And quite senior in age.  All the songs they played were in 

Norwegian. :)

I didn't get home till after midnight, it was a very long day!

Day two's program - More techical sessions!

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The sessions that I attended on day two were:

• Real Architecture: Engineering? or Pompous Bullshit? - This is an interesting take on what architecture is and what architects are supposed to do.  Basically if there are no hard numbers to an architecture i.e. how much will this save us and how fast will it run and under what performance specifications, an architect is not a real architect.
• The Complexity of Complexity - Just watch it!  Building software is insanely complex.
• Functional thinking - About programming in functions using Java
• Pump it up: Maximizing the value of an existing investment in Java with Ruby - Didn't interest me too much since it's Java but you would maybe be interested if you're a Java developer
• Building for the Cloud - I can't remember what this was, so it's better to skip this :)  I wanted to attend the Apache Wicket one but that was in Norwegian!
• Enterprise Integration - The seriously nasty stuff - This was presented by a guy with a background in finance applications so I was definitely interested in this session.
• Software G Forces: The effects of acceleration - Kent beck gives his take on how development, testing would change when deployments become shorter i.e. half yearly to quarterly to monthly to weekly to daily to hourly.

All in all the technical sessions were decent, I would probably go again, my only gripe is that all sessions should be in English.

All videos are available at vimeo so check them out if you're interested.

idéfestivalen at the University of Oslo and wow, it's a small world

Today was idéfestivalen (technology festival) at the University of Oslo (UIO), Blindern. We had a spot set up in the tent at Frederikkeplassen. I decided to go since I'd never been to the University before so I thought it would be interesting to check out. Moreover they needed volunteers. 4 of us showed up in the afternoon but one left an hour after.

What we do at work all day when we're not doing work all day!

The foosball table is our big attraction and that drew lots of kids! Somehow I think we're targeting the wrong crowd. :) There was a little girl there barely the height of the table and she just didn't want to leave. Her mum walked away and she still didn't want to budge.  One my work collegues played with the kids and he showed no mercy. :) I thought we could've done better with the setup. You could hear commentary and that wasn't obvious with our tiny speakers. Also there was a lack of the Cisco logo and no one was wearing Cisco shirts other than myself. I was trying to get some girls over to look at the table but I don't think they were interested. Well one of my team mates is going to be disappointed for sure. Somehow I don't think girls would join the company just because of foosball. It would've been good if we had a female volunteer in our ranks. Anyway I talked to some people about the table and how it works (lasers and magic pixie dust) and they were impressed.

There were other cool exhibits, cool but rather pointless.  The first booth showcased this idea of "smart balls".  There was a booth of a man juggling these balls and they change colours the higher they go.

I would've taken better photos but I left my memory card at home and my phone's battery died shortly after.  Alas alack it's not meant to be.

There was also another booth that featured fancy swishing sounds as you wave a sword, sort of like a light sable.  The sword is motioned tracked.  Fancy but again useless.

The third featured "air piano" through kinect.  Basically you move your fingers which are tracked and these are transformed into the appropriate movements on the piano.  Cool and possibly a little useful.

Jedi force training, no ma no hands on the piano!

The forth booth had a Google Earth of sorts projected on 4 large screens and you could zoom in and out and pan and all that.

The fifth booth had showed demos of real time face tracking using the camera on the iMac.  It overlayed a mesh on your face that you could see on the computer screen and you could move this mesh by stretching or simply dragging it on your face.  Of course you couldn't feel it, you just see how the mesh is affected on the screen.  That was interesting.

The sixth booth had a synthesizer of sorts with knobs that alter a sequence of music.  Each knob column alters one part of the music.  So 4 columns each altering a part of a music sequence.

Touch device specially built for tic-tac-toe.  Pen and paper are for seniors.

The seventh booth, perhaps the most interesting, showed a real life sized robot which looked exactly like its creator.  Narcissism?

The twin you wish you never had.  That, or this is surely the future of sex adult toys.

Guess this means he always has to shave and look exactly the same as his robotic twin.  This reminds me of that movie with Bruce Willis, Surrogates, where everyone basically lie in a perpetual sleep state and each person controls a physical representation of themselves in the real world.  Basically dreaming and controlling robotic versions of themselves.  Frankly somebody building a robot that looks like me doesn't appeal to me, at all.

All 3 of us left at around 4pm and I went shopping in the city.  And boy, was today random and unexpected.

I visit Torggata, where I do my Asian grocery shopping.  Anyway, after I finished shopping I was walking to catch the bus home and there was this young man who said hey and was trying to get my attention but I was ignoring him on purpose (I'm not a fan of the east side, perhaps because I've lost my wallet there, and the amazing number of negative stories that I hear from my Norwegian counterparts.  Sadly I admit I am a victim of my own biases).  After maybe walking 10 metres I finally turned around and he asked, "Are you Skyjuice Limo?" and at that point my curiousity level piqued.  Turns out it was somebody that follows this blog!  Well frankly I was just really amazed.  He was trying to say Hi and to thank me for sharing and I was just ignoring him!  Gosh I really felt like an ass. :)  So to the young man from Western Australia who moved to Norway 2 weeks ago and is doing an exchange here in Oslo for a year, I apologise for being so rude.

In future if any readers see me, I hope this doesn't stop you from saying Hi.  I promise I won't be an ass.  Obviously more people follow this blog than I bother to check.

I'm going to update this blog again tomorrow with posts on Javazone and Techzone tomorrow, both of which are technical conferences, the latter organised by work.  It's been a pretty fun two weeks.