Devoxx Belgium 2018, From Developers For Developers

Last November, I attended the Devoxx Belgium 2018 event.

In this article I gathered some practical information about the event, and the sessions that were held. Perhaps this gives you more insight in what you can expect from such an event and it may help you in deciding if, as it was for me, such an event is an opportunity for you to gather/share information. For me, this was the first Devoxx event I attended.

For more information, please see: https://devoxx.be/

Devoxx

Devoxx (previously known as JavaPolis) was founded by Stephan Janssen. Devoxx is a series of tech events organized by local community groups. There mantra is “Content is King”, as a result these events see both internationally renowned speakers and local rock stars.

Devoxx is spearheaded and supported by local communities. This means each event retains a unique regional flavor, whilst being part of the overall Devoxx movement. A spirit of openness, community, killer content and super-low priced tickets underpin the Devoxx philosophy.

Topics covered at Devoxx fall under the same radar as Voxxeddays.com, including: Server Side Java, Java Language, Cloud and Big Data, Web & HTML, Mobile, Programming Languages, Architecture & Security, Methodology, Culture and Future Technologies.
_{[https://beta.devoxx.com/#/about]}

Devoxx Belgium 2018

From Monday 12 November to Friday 16 November 2018, the Devoxx Belgium 2018 event was held in Antwerp. There were 221 sessions and 3200 attendees.

This particular event was sold out already in June 2018. So be aware that if you want to attend such an event, you have to be on top of it.

Tickets

With regard to tickets, the following options were available:

• Deep Dive pass (Monday & Tuesday)
• Conference pass (Wednesday – Friday)
• Combi pass (Monday – Friday)

_{[https://devoxx.be/faq]}

Different kind of sessions

During the 5 days Devoxx Belgium 2018 event different kind of sessions were held with a specific time period:

• Keynote
  The opening keynote sessions will inspire you and is a great way to warm-up your event experience.
• Hands-on Lab
  The hands-on labs allow you to get practical information about a selected subject in a class room setup.
• Deep Dive
  In depth sessions (3 hours) allowing the speakers to go much deeper into a technical subject.
• Conference
  The conference sessions are 50 minutes which represents the majority of the conference presentations.
• Tools-in-Action
  The Tools-in-action are short sessions of 30 minutes, focusing on demonstrating tools, technical tools or solutions.
• Quickie
  These are very short presentations of 15 minutes. An ideal format for beginning speakers trying to pick up some speaker credits. Or for the more seasoned speakers that want to explain a subject in only 15 minutes.
• BOF
  BOF (Bird of a feather) sessions, are informal sessions where technical subjects are discussed in an open-minded atmosphere.

_{[https://dvbe18.confinabox.com/index.html]}

Content tracks

The sessions can be divided into the following content tracks:

• Cloud, Containers & Infrastructure
  Serverless, Docker, Kubernetes, Mesos, Service Mesh, Cloud, PaaS, Vagrant, etc
• Java Language
  Java language, Java SE, JDK, performance, tuning, modularity, etc
• Architecture & Security
  How-Tos, strategies, tools, techniques and best practices for getting architecture right. Anything related to security and development
• Programming languages
  Other languages running on the JVM, functional, emerging languages, tools, libraries, etc
• Big Data & Machine Learning
  Big Data, NoSQL, Spark, Hadoop, Drill, Machine learning, etc
• Modern Web & UX
  Progressive web apps, Polymer, Web frameworks, Reactive, libraries, languages and tools to build web apps
• Methodology & Culture
  Software development methodologies, developer culture, DevOps, CI/CD, etc
• Server Side Java
  Java EE, App servers, Spring Framework, MOM, Related JSRs, etc
• Mobile & IoT
  Android, iOS, Xamarin, IOT, Embedded, M2M, smart objects, connectivity, security, etc
• Mind the Geek
  Developer candy: stuff we want to know about but dont (generally) at work, Robotics, biological computing, cybernetics, AI, new toys, tomorrows world

_{[https://dvbe18.confinabox.com]}

Exhibition Floor

Tech companies from around the world show case their solutions, products and services on Tuesday onwards until Thursday evening.
_{[https://devoxx.be/]}

Some examples of international speakers that were at the event

Venkat Subramaniam Agile Developer

Dr. Venkat Subramaniam is an award-winning author, founder of Agile Developer, Inc., creator of agilelearner.com, and an instructional professor at the University of Houston. He has trained and mentored thousands of software developers in the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia, and is a regularly-invited speaker at several international conferences. Venkat helps his clients effectively apply and succeed with sustainable agile practices on their software projects. Venkat is a (co)author of multiple technical books, including the 2007 Jolt Productivity award winning book Practices of an Agile Developer. You can find a list of his books at agiledeveloper.com. You can reach him by email at venkats@agiledeveloper.com or on twitter at @venkat_s [https://beta.devoxx.com/#/speaker/49]

Mark Reinhold Oracle

Mark Reinhold is Chief Architect of the Java Platform Group at Oracle. His past contributions to the platform include character-stream readers and writers, reference objects, shutdown hooks, the NIO high-performance I/O APIs, library generification, service loaders, and the Jigsaw module system. Mark has held key leadership roles in every Java SE and JDK release since version 1.2, in 1998. He currently leads the JDK Project in the OpenJDK Community, where he also serves on the Governing Board. Mark holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [https://dvbe18.confinabox.com/talk/YEF-3619/Java_in_2018:_Change_is_the_Only_Constant_-_Overflow]

James Gosling Distinguished Engineer Amazon Web Services

Best known as the founder and lead designer behind the Java programming language [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling]

“Devoxx” mobile app

Before the event started an app was made available. The official schedule app is named “Devoxx” and is officially supported on iOS and Android by the Gluon & Devoxx team.

Install this app and you’re set for all the future Devoxx and VoxxedDays events. Select your preferred event and start scheduling your sessions.

For downloads and more information, please see:
https://devoxx.be/the-official-my-devoxx-mobile-apps/

Features of the app are:

• Supports all Devoxx events, one app to rule them all!
• Create a personal schedule by favouriting talks
• Sync your favourite presentations
• Rate talks
• Scan attendee badges
• Schedule works offline

For me, the schedule with all the sessions was very helpful. Being able to see in advance which sessions were the most favorite, helped me in some cases to decide to which sessions I wanted to go.

Detailed information about the content of a session is also available. For example (see above): 9 steps to Awesome with Kubernetes, by Burr Sutter.

Of course, the schedule and information about all the sessions is also available on line. Please see:
https://dvbe18.confinabox.com/index.html

Top Rated Talks of the Week

During the week, between sessions, the “Top Rated Talks of the Week” are shown. Below you see the status on November 15th somewhere in the morning:

Depending on the speaker and the content at some sessions the room is loaded with attendees.

Information about the sessions

All sessions are streamed live, so you can watch every session – as it happens or afterwards via YouTube:
Presentations

All the photos taken at the event can be viewed at flickr: Pictures

At the event al so paper schedules were handed out:

• DEEP DIVE DAY 1 November 12th 2018.pdf
• DEEP DIVE DAY 2 November 13th 2018.pdf
• CONFERENCE DAY 1 November 14th 2018.pdf
• CONFERENCE DAY 2 November 15th 2018.pdf
• CONFERENCE DAY 3 November 16th 2018.pdf

Whilst preparing this blog article I also found a Devoxx Belgium 2018 REST API, that serves the following content:

• A collection of Conferences
• A conference
• A list of speakers
• A speaker
• A talk
• A set of schedules
• A schedule
• A link
• The list of event’s talks formats (conference, labs, keynote…)
• The list of event’s tracks
• The list of Rooms
• A schedule for a specific room and a specific day

Please see: https://dvbe18.confinabox.com/api

Top-100-Rated-Talks for #Devoxx Belgium 2018

After the event, via twitter, the Top-100-Rated-Talks for #Devoxx Belgium 2018 were made available.

_{[https://twitter.com/devoxx/status/1064452715034669056?lang=en]}

For your convenience I added the Top 25 Rated-Talks for #Devoxx Belgium 2018 in a more readable form:

Important news/sessions at Devoxx

I leave it up to you to have a look at the sessions that were held and that may be interesting to you to have a look at.

However, I want to share with you the surprise appearance that James Gosling (the founder of Java) made and his announcement of “Amazon Corretto” during the keynotes of the conference.

Amazon Corretto, is a no-cost, multiplatform, production-ready distribution of OpenJDK from Amazon.
_{[https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/amazon-corretto-no-cost-distribution-openjdk-long-term-support]}

Devoxx events in 2019

If you are interested in attending a future Devoxx event, please see https://beta.devoxx.com/#/ for more information. Here are some examples:

• 17 – 19 April 2019
  3 days
  235 sessions
  3000 attendees

  Paris

  _{[https://devoxx.fr/]}

• 8 – 10 Mai 2019
  3 days / 130 speakers
  120 sessions
  1300 attendees

  London

  _{[https://www.devoxx.co.uk/]}

• 4 – 8 November 2019
  5 days

  Antwerp

  _{[https://devoxx.be/]}

Concluding

Attending Devoxx in Belgium, was a great week for me in gaining new insights and knowledge on a variety of subjects, such as Java, Docker, Kubernetes, Apache Kafka, Microservices and IntelliJ IDEA.