Josh On Design

Last week I gave two sessions on JavaFX at the OreDev conference in Malmo, Sweden (sorry guys, I don't know how to put the dots over the 'o' with my english keyboard). I had a wonderful time. This is one of the most organized and well designed conferences I've ever been to. The speakers were treated very well with shuttles to the conference, a tour of the city, and even a special dinner in the history city hall building with the deputy mayor.

My two sessions went very well. The first was an in depth discussion of the JavaFX Script language as part of the Cool Languages track. I got several good questions which have prompted more discussion with other JVM language experts. My second session was the Client Java Overview which covered, in fifty minutes, the history of Java on the client, JavaSE 6 update 10, the JavaFX platform, JavaFX tools, and JavaFX for designers. Plus I even snuck in a few new demos that no one has seen before.

This was a good size for a conference, about a thousand people, I think; and the tracks were a nice mix. This was definitely not a Java-only thing. There were tracks for .Net, testing, Scrum, usability, and other cool stuff. I got to meet some great people who are experts in things I'm not, such as Silverlight and Surface. The cross-technology nature of the conference is wonderful. It makes me realize that there is far more room for cross-pollination than we might think.

Sweden is clearly a beautiful country. The weather was cold and rainy, just like my native Oregon. :) Even more incredible, since the year 2000 Sweden has been connected to continental Europe via a bridge. You can actually take the train over the ocean to Sweden from Denmark or anywhere else in Europe. And most importantly the Swedes love their coffee. An afternoon coffee break is built right into the conference schedule. I will definitely be coming back next year, so thank you very much Michael for setting this up.

That's it for now. On to the JavaFX launch on December 4th. See you soon.