JavaZone 2010 – Oslo
I was privileged to present at JavaZone in Oslo, Norway this week. JavaZone is Norway’s major Java-centered conference, and drew around 2,500 people this year. It’s a high-energy show with well-known and impressive marketing. There were seven tracks of presentations from regional and international speakers and a busy exhibition floor, mostly populated (in my extremely unscientific sample) with Norwegian consulting and technology companies.
The JavaZone exhibition floor.
Speakers speaking with one another. Note my mother-in-law at center right, who happily accompanied me on this trip.
I gave one lightning talk in the first session of the day on Wednesday. It was a ten-minute variant of my now well-rehearsed Then Our Buildings Shape Us: Form And Content in Software Development. JavaZone lightning talks are ten minutes in length, so I had to expand on the Ignite-style format the talk currently has. Turns out I expanded too much, and I didn’t quite finish in time, despite the fact that my rehearsals indicated that I’d finish 10-15 seconds early. I think being in front of a live audience encourages a speaker to elaborate on the script just a bit, which this very constrained form doesn’t really allow. Lesson learned.
Around lunchtime on Thursday, I gave Decision Making in Software Teams. The talk was well-received, eliciting good feedback on Twitter and—better yet—in person. JavaZone, showing their class as a conference, rewarded me with a bottle of red wine, which will be shared with Mrs. Berglund later in the week.
Oslo offers no shortage of incredible opportunities for tourists, and fortunately I was able to take two days before the show and enjoy some of those sites. On Monday we visited the Viking Museum, which is a collection of first millennium Viking artifcats centered around a few more or less complete longboats.
A 1000-year-old Viking longboat.
Later that day, we walked around the National Palace, a beautiful building surrounded by some first-class gardens.
The Norwegian National Palace.
Our hotel, which wasn’t situated in a particularly historic part of town, still offered beautiful views from the window.
The view from our hotel room in the afternoon.
The view from our hotel room in the evening.
No tourist visit to Oslo could possibly be complete without a visit to the Sculpture Park, a sprawling garden on the west end of the city build around a number of stone sculptures depicting various kinds of human relationships in various phases of development. I won’t elaborate on it here, except to say that if you take your time and pay attention to the art, it’s a deeply moving experience.
A man and a woman dreaming (from the Oslo Sculpture Park).
There was more to the show and to the trip, but the best travelogue is the shortest. Schedule permitting, I’ll certainly be sending proposals to JavaZone in 2011. If you’re a speaker, I encourage you to do the same.
Matthew McCullough Said,
September 12, 2010 @ 4:08 pm
You’ll have to schedule time for the after-trip next year. What a classy show that would treat speakers and locals alike to traveling to Besseggen. We were already musing about and planning 2011 — that’s how passionate this group is about JavaZone. But beware Norwegian HIKING. Westerners would translate it to CLIMBING. What a great show, classy organizers, and beautiful country. Highly recommended.
Dan Hinojosa Said,
September 14, 2010 @ 11:27 am
Nude statues and Viking long boats? Had no idea this was an adult entertainment site.
Congratulations on all your speaking engagements!