fjellstad.org

I went to the JavaZone conference this week, my first conference in Norway.

The first thing that struck me was how small everything was. Now, I didn’t expect Comdex or JavaOne size, but still, I kinda expected something bigger. Especially since it billed itself as “the largest developer conference in Scandinavia”. If the smaller conferences in the US is probably twice if not three times as big as this one.

The second thing that struck me was how rubbish most of the speakers were. Not rubbish in the sense that the topic wasn’t interesting, but rubbish in the sense that the speakers weren’t any good at presenting their topic. The best speakers were those who came from the US and England. That was somewhat weird, considering some of the speakers billed themselves as “professional speakers”. Had a talk with someone at work about it, and he mentioned that the speakers in Norway probably hadn’t had formal training yet, and probably amateurs. Still, if you want to make a living as a speaker, hire a Speaking Coach, or take a class. I would think it would be worth it.

In any case, here are some of my favorite speakers from the conference

Jim Webber had a presentation entitled “Guerrilla SOA”. Basically put words to everything I have found weird about working with SOA the last couple of months.

Mary Poppendieck had a presentation on Lean Software Development, which I really found interesting. Lean software development seems to what all this agile programming people really are striving for. Got me thinking about what kind of decision you need to do right now…

Michael Feathers presentation on how to “see” good and bad code.

Robert C. Martins on writing good functions.

Not only are all these people really good presenters, but the topics were pretty interesting too. They are highly recommended if you ever get a chance to listen to them speak.