Jazoon 2007: Last day

I didn't really get around to take any notes the last day. Or well, I did take some notes but I lost them.. Here's what I attended at least:

• Neil Gafter's keynote about closures
• A slightly booring talk by Danny Coward on the future of Java
• OSGi embedded <- good talk. Interesting topic, good speakers and demos
• Q & A about Web 3.0 with Henry Story <-good talk
• Discussed Jackrabbit performance with David Nuescheler so I was late for the last, and most interesting talk of the day:
• The build-up of artificial complexity <-- good talk

In the last talk, I asked the speaker whether he thought extensions of Java as a platform was a fair way of increasing complexity vs new languages better fit for the job (a more powerful platform does reduce the need for new components), with a particular regard to AOP and Closures. He answered that AspectJ in runtime would be considered a foreign component increasing complexity quite a bit, but closures would be more of a welcome addition to the language.

I asked the same question to Peter Sommerlad yesterday, and his answer was that he discussed this with Kiczales about this some ten years ago, and his belief was that the developers/tools weren't ready for it yet. We first have to master the art of OOP before we advance to AOP, but I'm not sure I agree. Alot of the GoF-patterns we use today are there because of restrictions in C++/Java, and maybe OO wouldn't be that much worse of having to be learned with AOP.. Just a thought.

(By the way, reason this post is done so many days after Jazoon is that we've been constantly occupied since, attending an internal AOP-workshop for the last two days straight. Thanks, Kaare! Great workshop.)

In the closing session/lightning talks I learned how to present the Semantic Web in 1 minute, some good books to read on python and management, and learned lots of other interesting facts that I have since forgotten.

To summarize my experiences of the first Jazoon:

Bad things:

• Far from packed (700 people I think, was room for a bit more than that methinks)
  
• Level of speakers were a bit up'n'down
  
• Should've turned the lights in the theaters on during talks
• The talks' slides (and hopefully video) aren't up yet
• Zurich is *nearly* as expensive as Oslo. And pretty similar in every other aspect except the language :)
  

Good things about Jazoon:

• Attracted a great score of central/south/eastern-European developers (where I predict great things will come from the next few years)
  
• Organization was like clock-work
• Wireless was constantly up
• Lots of room :)
• Power slots every other row in the theaters

Thanks to the Jazoon organizers. I really believe you have the infrastructure and organization to become a great conference in the future, perhaps already next year. So get your abstracts ready, folks :)

Oh, and as a side-note, my abstract didn't get accepted for JavaZone this year, so the material probably won't get any more "exposure" here in the blog, although I will continue implementing the pattern in my day-to-day work.