I attended the fifth, and my first, Great Indian Developer Summit in the Silicon Valley of India, Bangalore. The conference is spread over 4 days with each day covering .NET, Web, Java, and Workshops respectively. The Java track had 800+ attendees (roughly based on a cursory headcount for the opening keynote) and the hall was packed. The theater style seating allowed the attendees to enjoy the wide screen presentations.
Another unique and cool thing about the conference is that they create life size posters of all the speakers and display them outside the speakers' room. This not only help you identify your room easily but also makes you feel like a celebrity ;-) Here are some pictures of the posters:
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Venkat's opening keynote is always fun. He talked about "Refactor your Language Knowledge Portfolio: We're What We Can Code In". His entertaining presentation style keeps the audience engaged and laughing. His href="http://thinkrelevance.com/blog/2008/04/23/refactoring-from-ceremony-to-essence">Essence vs Ceremony analogy was particularly impressive and I recommend reading that blog.
I gave three presentations and a hands-on workshop and the slides are now available.
This presentation gave an overview of JMS 2.0 and the new features coming there. This presentation had 200+ attendees and 50% of the audience were existing users of JMS. There was a lot interactivity during/after the session. Do you know href="http://jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/edr/jsr343/index.html">JMS 2.0 Early Draft is already available ?
The primary goal of this specification is to provide a simplified API and clarify the ambiguities discovered over the past few years. Check out href="https://blogs.oracle.com/arungupta/entry/jms_2_0_early_draft">this blog for a quick comparison between the existing and the simplified API. If you have any feature request then its highly recommended to file a JIRA issue at href="http://jms-spec.java.net">jms-spec.java.net.
This presentation gave an overview of JAX-RS 2.0. Do you know that href="http://jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/edr/jsr339/index.html"> Early Draft 2 is already available ? Check out href="https://blogs.oracle.com/arungupta/entry/jax_rs_2_0_early">this blog for a brief overview of the new features coming in JAX-RS 2.0. You can find the latest updates at href="http://jax-rs-spec.java.net">jax-rs-spec.java.net and also follow @gf_jersey.
style="display:block;margin:12px 0 4px">href="http://www.slideshare.net/arungupta1/paa-s-javaee" title="GIDS 2012: PaaSing a Java EE Application" target="_blank">GIDS 2012: PaaSing a Java EE Application src="http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/12638474" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0" height="355" scrolling="no" width="425">
This presentation explained the key concepts of how GlassFish PaaS-enable your Java EE application. The talk also showed how a Java EE application can be deployed where all he services required by the application are dynamically provisioned. A working version of the application, along with instructions, are available at href="http://glassfish.org/javaone2011">glassfish.org/javaone2011. A video of the application in action is shown below:
The video also shows how the cluster dynamically adjusts to meet the elasticity constraints pre-defined for the application.
The Java EE 6 hands-on lab had about 20 attendees. The self-pace instructions can be href="//cdn.app.compendium.com/uploads/user/e7c690e8-6ff9-102a-ac6d-e4aebca50425/f4a5b21d-66fa-4885-92bf-c4e81c06d916/File/a1b7678d51f714d9ffef3adbbf92d7a6/javaee6_hol_glassfish.pdf">downloaded here. I was pretty amazed by the level of interaction. There was one particular guy who who came from the PHP land, was taking notes on a paper notebook, and was asking the most intelligent questions. There were other experienced J2EE/Java EE users who also enjoyed the simplicity introduced in the platform.
And somehow for the past few days the question of Java EE 6 over Spring has come up during each such engagement. My views are clearly expressed at href="https://blogs.oracle.com/arungupta/entry/why_java_ee_6_is">Why Java EE 6 is better than Spring. And do read the interesting discussion in the comments, all the way to the end.
The conference was well organized with a personal introduction of each speaker. The rooms were well marked and the projectors worked very well. The conference crew was very helpful and prompt in reminding about the time remaining. However a 45 minute session is a few minutes too short and so had to tweak my existing slide deck to meet the time requirements.
Multiple conflicting talks were arranged such as Mike's Java EE 7 and mine JMS 2.0, Venkat's "Java 8: A Sneak Peak" and Simon's "Java SE 8 & Beyond". This feedback was conveyed to the organizers. Hopefully they'll be able to do a better job of this next time around.
On a personal side, I enjoyed a team dinner at href="http://www.barbeque-nation.com/">BBQ Nation and is definitely worth visiting once at least. And could also manage to enjoy a lunch at MTR with Vivek. The href="http://www.itchotels.in/hotels/itcwindsor.aspx">ITC Windsor is a nice hotel with a decent fitness center and a great restaurant. The breakfast buffet had a great variety and very scrumptious.
The Java EE 7 platform will be much more mature by this time next year and who knows I might even submit a Java EE 7 hands-on lab!
Thank you Salt March Media for putting up a great show and providing me an opportunity to present. Looking forward to my participation again next year!