JUGC event, August 3rd: SOA and Ajax

Yesterday the recent Java User Group Cologne event took place. It was a conference with three separate talks. Starting at about 5.30 pm I opened the event finding some warm words to the audience and the location sponsor: Deutsche Telekom.

The first talk was given by Dr. Arno Puder, Professor at the San Francisco State University, and his free framework core team consisting of Wolfgang Korn and Sascha Häberling. They presented their Ajax framework XML11. An impressive talk! XML11 allows you to write Ajax applications in Java, compiling them and migrating the Java bytecode to Javascript code. Many questions were asked to the presenters during their 60 minutes presentation.

After a small break for drinks, beer and pizza Owen Taylor from GigaSpaces was the next one talking about Gigaspaces' "spaces"-solution for a SOA-driven system architecture for linear scalable application distribution. Also this talk was escorted by many questions. Because of the thrilling content and these many questions I extended the talk duration from 60 minutes to 90 minutes situatively.

The last talk was given by Max Antoni about his EvaServer. Max is a Ajax geek and he gave excellent insight into the world of Ajax and his own Ajax server.

I awareded the two guys who asked so many excellent questions with a special price. Additionally I distributed some books while asking the audience some questions.

The conference finished at about 9.45 pm after over 4 hours 30 minutes. Wow. I was at the location at about 3.30 pm for supporting the Telekom preparing the seating, micro and this technical equipment. There was not so much work left, they already set up the location pretty well. Thanks! The location is very, very comfortable and suits perfect for such events. Although the JUGC was at the Telekom building last summer already for a talk of Dr. Heinz Kabutz, meanwhile I normally host the events at the University of Cologne.

One intention of the event was having fun again. And it was fun .. meeting the people and drinking some ice cold Kölsch beers. All my work organizing the event paid off again. GigaSpaces gave me a budget for organizing finger food and drinks. On the last day (!) before the event I found someone having a car who was willing to bring the drinks from a local shop. Currently I do not have a car ... thanks, Max! The community does also say thank you to Ulf for bringing the boxes and ice. It took him until the event day to commit on this ... but worked luckily and Max and Ulf, you got the money back directly. Ulf, thanks that you skipped your request for being paid for the fuel. If I would have asked the pizza service for drinks too, it would have been more expensive. And ice boxes are necessary: warm Kölsch is an Antipattern. After the event we went to a local bar having some more fun.

Hosting a JUGC event on a Friday was an experiment. Normally the happenings are during the week. I'm not sure about the result of the experiment. On the one hand about 35 attendants are a sign that it crashed (normally there are up to 100 people), on the other hand yesterday also a big city party was in Cologne, warm weather and still holiday time. The JUGC workshops last year which were also done on a Friday were pretty good received.

The next event will take place at August, 21st. Then Mike Keith, co-spec lead of EJB3 and working for Oracle, will give a talk about EJB3/JPA. Currently I'm not sure where I will arrange the evening. Please have a look on jugcologne.org for updates. Two events in one month -- meanwhile I feel like a full-time event manager.