Update 2010-05-08
The video of my session is up! Check it out at http://oredev.com/videos/dynamic-deployment-with-osgi.

This past week (4 – 6 November), I went to Øredev, probably the largest developer conference in Scandinavia. I had been invited as a speaker, thanks for having me!

Great food, nice ambiance

The first thing that strikes me about this conference is how well it has been prepared. The food is great, there is a good evening program, and overall both your inner geek and inner person are well looked after.

Highlights

Interactive Visualizations from Microsoft research – Eric Stollnitz (User Experience track)
One of the rare talks I actually did not like. Having not read the session description properly, I had totally wrong expectations; the session demoed visual tools like Photosynth, which are cool, but not something we haven’t seen before. And besides, running Vista on a Mac, and having to kill Internet Explorer…?

Open source Java: ten things you didn’t know you could do – Terrence Barr (Java track)
Early in the talk it felt like a plug for the greatness of Sun, making Java open source. Later, however, it mentions some seriously cool technology that has become possible now! Some honorable mentions,

• The Maxine guest VM is an effort to run a Java VM directly on a HyperVisor, skipping the entire OS!
• IKVM.NET is a project aiming to run Java code on a .NET VM. Somehow, it turns out that Java bytecode and .NET assembly language are so similar, that an effort has been started to create automatic translation tools between compiled Java and compiled .NET (and vice versa). I would like to add that this is allows not only Java to run on a .NET VM, but likely any language that runs on the Java VM! Interesting…
• Zero writes a Java VM in plain C without using assembler code, making it easier to port it to new platforms.

The Manager’s Guide to Agile Adoption – Mike Cottmeyer (PM In Practice track)
A great talk showing the issues that might hamper agile adoption, especially in larger organizations. Some snippets,

• “Agile adoption at the team level is not the issue, it’s adopting agile across teams.”
• Don’t speak of features of a system, speak of capabilities (think about that one!)
• Depending on the amount of dependencies between teams, we could use a Scrum of Scrums (resource dependency), Product Owner team (requirements dependency), or a Product Owner team with Architects (technical dependencies). Whatever method is used, this higher level should build a normalized backlog, intended to create some alignment along the teams. The team’s backlogs are based on this normalized backlog.
• Feature teams will break down at some level; at a certain system size, it’s no longer possible to create a top-to-bottom slice of the system which is small enough for a single team to manage.

In short, I really enjoyed this talk, and I feel there might be some applications for these ideas somewhere near me…

How Exactly Can Developers Create a Compelling User Experience? – Ben Galbraith (User Experience track)
Exactly the way I would expect a user experience talk to look (and feel!) like: polished imagery, a well-oiled story line, and lots of inspiration. Besides, I have two new books to add to my reading list: About Face by Alan Cooper, which seems to be the standard volume on interaction design, and The humane interface by Jeff Raskin.

Reconsidering cherished design dogmas – Johannes Brodwall & Finn-Robert Kristensen (Architecture track)
I actually had a beer with these guys a few days earlier, and they told me about their ideas. In short, there are a number of dogmas in software design we came to hold true, but are they actually true? For instance, is generic code really more reusable than specific code?

It’s a shame the talk didn’t really come across, and I could not put my finger on the problem; it might have something to do with the over-abstracted example they chose.

Dynamic Deployment with OSGi – Angelo van der Sijpt (Java track)
Well, let the crowds decide on this one. Have you visited my talk, and have an opinion about it? Let me know in the comments?

Modeling in the Age of Agility – Kevlin Henney (Agile Architecture track)
“Working software over comprehensive documentation” sounds good, but how about modeling? Are all models potential waste? Of course not, but when applying modeling because it is modeling, is sure to create models no one will ever look at, and the few good ones in there are buried. Some snippets,

• “Agile is all about doing.” Actually, I did not know the word ‘Agile’ comes from the Latin verb for ‘to do’.
• “The most important aspect of modeling is the -ing.”

So?

Like I said, a great conference, and I’m sorry I missed the test track. I will leave you with a quote I picked up on Twitter (I don’t know which session it’s from),

“Don’t build frameworks, extract them”