JavaOne and OOW 2015 Summary

Hello everyone! Finally I'm back after a great JavaOne and OOW 2015. In this post I'd like to share my experiences, some photos and a summary of the talks I attended.

Pre Conference

I flew to San Francisco on Saturday 24th 2015 via Copa Airlines CLO-PTY-SFO. Long trip from Colombia (about 8 hours).

I missed the Geek Bike Ride, a community event recommended to everyone who arrives to San Francisco on Friday (or before) since it starts at 8:30am on Saturday (I arrived at 15:00...). They crossed the Golden Gate Bridge to a little town called Sausalito, then they took a ferry back to San Francisco, really nice view.

At night, there was the Chinascaria, a Brazilian BBQ at Stephen Chin's house. Food was delicious and a great place for networking. A picture is worth a thousand words:

Day 1 (Sunday)

Sunday is the community day, so most of the talks are focused on User Groups. This day I attended the following talks: 

• How to Run Your Own JUG's Java Conference [UGF11080]. It was a conference about how to run your own Java conference based on the experience of the Chicago Coder Conference creators. Lots of good advices for the conference we are planning to run next year at CLOJUG.
  
• Improving Your Developer Career [UGF11081]. Two Brazilian Java Champions, Bruno Souza and Edson Yanaga shared some advices to improve your career, 9 simple tips you can follow in order to advance in your IT career. The message I liked the most was: "Take the control of your career, don't let others decide which way you should go".
  
• Java Strategy Keynote. This is the day when the Strategy Keynote is delivered. This year the keynote lacked several features from the past: demos, news... The general feeling is that it wasn't a good keynote, but judge for yourself, watch the keynote on demand.
  
• Coffee Potpourri: A Mixture of Everything Java [UGF11075]. This session was all about Q&A about everything in Java. A panel of JUG Leaders and Java Champions answered a set of about 30 questions. I answered a question regarding the use of the class Optional but I feel that I didn't explain well. What I meant was: Use the class Optional if you want to add meaning to your code, if you want your code to be more secure when someone else uses it. It's all about safe code.
  
• JCP Meet the Executive Committee: Main Room [UGF11076]. In this session you get to know the JCP EC people and also you can get some beer! This is not a technical talk, but if your career is all about Java this session is a must.

At night, we were invited to the GlassFish, NetBeans, and OTN Party at the Thirsty Bear (a local brewer), where the JEspañol community shoot some videos with some of the Spanish speaking attendees.

Day 2 (Monday)

Officially this is the first day of the conference. Most of the talks I attended were Oracle ADF focused.

• Component-Based Unit Testing of Oracle ADF Applications with Selenium [CON2866]. For those of you who develop ADF applications, you should know there is an open source project called ADF Selenium Tools which maps ADF components to page objects and thus provides convenient methods to interact with ADF applications. They showed a demo and it does work very well. Personally, I really liked this project because it eases the development of functional testing for ADF applications.
  
• Oracle Alta UI Design: Implementing Oracle's Best Practices in Your Applications [CON8296]. ALTA UI a modern mobile and browser design system used by oracle in several products was discussed in this talk. The presenters shared tips about how to use the new design system in order to achieve really interactive an modern UI for your applications. Some of the tips are: 
• Do not remove content in responsive design
• Present an answer first, not a question
• Make it easy to tap, touch, swipe
• Many more...
  
• Build Responsive Web Applications with Oracle ADF [HOL10380]. During this Hands-On-Lab we had the opportunity to experiment with the new features introduced in ADF 12.2.1 that let you create responsive UI in ADF Faces: the Masonry Layout, the af:matchMediaBehavior tag and the Responsive Template. With those three, responsive layouts can be achieve in ADF faces.

At night there was the JCP Party, best party during JavaOne. This one is organized by the JCP and is held at the Hilton. Great food, beverages and entertainment by The NullPointers band. Another space for networking.

Day 3 (Tuesday)

Second day of conferences:

• Developing On-Device Mobile Apps with Oracle MAF[HOL10379]. The day started with a Hands-on-Lab where we had the opportunity to integrate Oracle MAF and Oracle MCS (Mobile Cloud Services). In order to do that we worked on Eclipse IDE since JDeveloper does not support Oracle MCS yet. Oracle MCS lets you integrate data from different backends, shape it and expose it as Restful services so your mobile apps can consume them.
• Streams: The Real Powerhouse in Java 8 [CON8367]. Delivered by one of the best speakers I have ever seen: Venkat Subramaniam. This session was about Streams (and lambdas of course) in Java 8. Best practices and some advices, one of them: "Lambdas should not have side effects!"
• Java Community Insider Secrets! [CON3891]. If you wanted to know about the Java Community, what it is, who can join, how to apply, etc. This session was for you! Great information, I wish I had attended a session like this one when I was starting in the Java community.
• Ignite Session [IGN11289]. This is the first time I attend to the Ignite sessions. They are non-technical sessions delivered by recognized speakers like Arun Gupta, Venkat Subramaniam and others. Even 10 years old Andy Nilson (Kevin Nilson's son talked about mineraft). Presenters have 5 minutes to deliver their presentation. Slides move automatically after 5 seconds. It was fun!
• Meet the Experts: Oracle’s Development Tools and Frameworks [MTE10022]. Explanatory session if you are into Oracle Tools development like Oracle ADF, MAF, etc. Specially to avoid the confusion with the new Oracle JET tool. When should I use what?
  
  
  

In the afternoon we were interviewed at Nighthacking about JEspañol, the Spanish speaking community we are building:

At night we attended a Jug leaders and Java Champions dinner at the Thirsty Bear. Lots of networking, we made contacts to bring Java Champions to Spanish Speaking countries next year (2016), Stay tuned!

Day 4 (Wednesday)
Attended just one session since I wanted to spend the day at the exhibition hall.

• Oracle ADF and Oracle JDeveloper - What’s New and How to Use It [CON8333]. Session about the new features of ADF and JDeveloper 12.2.1. What I liked the most:
• Support for Java SE 8 and Java EE 7
• Expose AM as Rest Services (great for backend applications and code reuse)
• New features for Responsive applications
• Better Maven integration

In the afternoon I was at Hackergarten contributing to the JSR 354: Money and Currency API examples. Feels good to contribute :)

I also met Mohamed Taman, Java Champion from Egypt who was promoting his book about JavaFx

At night, the Oracle Appreciation Event, at Treasure Island, Elton John and Beck were performing that night. Food, beverages, friends, networking... Not my kind of music though.


Day 5 (Thursday)
Last day of sessions, last day for networking, last day... you are really tired on Thursday and you jut want it to be over :)

• Java Community Keynote [KEY8050]. Best Community Keynote ever!! watch it yourself on demand.

In the afternoon I went to Duke's Cafe in order to have one last beer with some friends at JavaOne. See ya next year!

Remember, conferences are all about networking, most presentations are available for download. Just visit the session catalog, filter according to your interests and download them for free!