Summary of Devoxx 2012

 Devoxx topped off a crazy two months of conferences. I've heard people talk about the conference season in the past, and been slightly (OK, very) jealous of all that jet-setting.  I'll admit, however, to a slight feeling of relief that my focus until Christmas is pretty much going to be coding.  I hope.

Neal Ford's When Geek Leaks

So, how was Devoxx?  Well for starters, the calibre of the speakers and talks was excellent.  I learnt things in every one I went to - either something I could put into practice at work, or something I could do to improve my own presentations.  My favourite was Neal Ford's When Geek Leaks - Neal is a great speaker, and this talk was entertaining and informative. I'm also currently reading his Presentation Patterns book, which is extremely useful.  Although obviously I give a bunch of presentations and have found some very handy tips in here, it's dead handy for everyone, even if you're just presenting to your boss or team at work.

The great thing about Devoxx is being able to meet all the European-based people in the Java space. People fight to get to JavaOne, but Devoxx is a lot easier if you're based over this side of the pond. It's also easy to run into people in either the exhibition area (where lunch is served, so everyone ends up there at some point), or the central corridor between the rooms (which everyone has to go through at some point).  It was really awesome to have so many people grab me either at the MongoDB booth or when I was sat at the desks in the corridor.  I really like that venue for a conference, the only downside is the seats are so comfortable, people fall asleep in the talks.  Even in our presentation (how rude).



I have a lot of personal highlights from Devoxx now I'm finally free to think about it:

• It was fun making a couple of guest appearances in the keynote, firstly as one of Stephen Chin's Nighthacking crew and then to celebrate the London Java Community being re-elected to the Java Community Process Executive Committee (with a massive 33% of the vote!).

• Another re-run of The Problem With Women.  If anything, this went even better than when I ran it at JavaOne. What I really loved about the session is the sheer number of men who turned up.  it's tempting to assume they're there to heckle, but in fact their active participation in the subject proves to me that the men in this industry are very much on board with trying to address the gender balance.  As always, I have so much more to say on this subject, so I'll make a note to write a separate blog post.  In summary, although there are differences in the contributions from the audience in these sessions, there are common themes and a willingness to get involved and Do Something.

Agile++ with Israel Boza Rodriguez

• The exclusive premier of the new Agile++ talk, co-presented with a colleague of mine from LMAX.  The aim of this presentation was to talk about where you go when your organisation starts with a great agile grounding - what problems might you face and how do you tackle them.  Bit confusing for me giving this talk since I was still in LMAX-mode, and I'm very grateful to 10gen for not only allowing me to present this, but actually promoting it for us as well. I'd love to do this session again, I'd like to work out how to without having a split personality as an LMAX person and a MongoDB person.