EnglishThis is the first time ever I take part in a conference abroad (i.e. outside Italy). Although I stayed there only for one day and a half, I must really congratulate the BeJUG on the top-notch organization of this event. Here are the main strengths of this JavaPolis edition:
- Impeccable organization, capable of standing a 2800-person horde with virtually no glitch;
- High-quality agenda, with a lot of interesting speeches and hands-on sessions;
- Terrific all-u-can-eat and all-u-can-drink buffet with some real winners such as the super-duper breakfast croissants 🙂
On the other hand, the only serious weakness is the very tight agenda itself: cramming so many parallel sessions together made it pretty difficult to attend a self-consistent topic or track, and probably the overall technical level suffered somewhat.
Visitors, JUGs and Sponsors from Benelux, all over Europe and even overseas (mainly the US) joined together to form a very dynamic context for exchanging experience, tips, tricks, ideas and views. No doubt this is a winning cocktail!
I also liked the whiteboards to freely express one’s views on very particular technical topics, mainly related to new feature wish list for an upcoming version of the JDK. Though not very effective by itself, I found it a very funny idea (and quite nerdy too 🙂 )
Last but not least, I managed to meet fellow Advanced Java ML member Ted Neward, a well-known Java and .NET guru: he was doing interviews for JavaPolis and he had a conference session on Thursday 14th. Unfortunately, my tight flight schedule prevented me from attending his speech, and he was very busy so we only had enough time for a little chat: but it was really a pleasure to meet him in the flesh, which not so easy when there’s an ocean (and a continent) in between 🙂