We work hard to get state-of-the-art technology into the Axon Ivy Platform so that our customers and partner can benefit from it. This means for us as the development team of the Platform to keep up with the latest technology, learn and know them. Inside the team, we do this by:
• yearly having a code camp where each team member can dive into a certain technology and learn it.
• attend meetings and talks given by the local Java User Group (jug.ch).
• attend tech conferences like Devoxx, EclipseCon, JAX, WJAX, VoxxDay, etc.
• having regular knowledge transfer meetings where a member explains a certain technology to the other team members.
This year I visited the Devoxx Belgium conference. Devoxx is the largest Java User conference in Europe with 3’300 visitors. The three-day conference was sold out in 5 minutes. However, a combi ticket with two-day deep dive sessions and the conference was longer available and luckily, I was able to grab one.
On Sunday the 9th of October, I traveled to Antwerp in Belgium. A nice harbor city with a lot of old buildings. The conference itself is located at one of the biggest European cinema complexes. All talks are given in large Cinema rooms that have places for up to 600 people. Monday and Tuesday the deep dive sessions that last three hours each took place. These sessions have room to go into details of new technology. Whereas the sessions at the conference on Wednesday till Friday are shorter - thirty minutes to an hour - and are mostly a short introduction to a certain topic.
During my visit I attended about 35 sessions in total with topics about:
• New feature in the Java Virtual Machine and Language
• Running Java in containers
• Cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, Helm, Kustomize
• Artificial Intelligence and Maschine Learning
• Software Design and Architecture
• …
The speakers at the conference are the best our industry has. Unfortunately, no American team members of Oracles Java Platform Group were attending this year as they usually did in previous years.
On Wednesday evening the free beer and chips event takes place. Always a nice event to meet with and talk to other conference attendees or speakers. Like James Gosling, who is the inventor of the Java Language.
On Friday evening I returned home. Very tired – I’m no longer used to attending talks the whole day as I was when going to university – or was it the Belgium beer?
Anyway, I now have a lot of new topics for our next knowledge transfer meetings.
PS:
All talks of Devoxx Belgium 2022 are online on YouTube.
And some pictures with impressions