It’s been three years since last time I spoke at JavaZone, so it was very good to be back this year. The usual venue in downtown Oslo is under renovation, so the entire conference had relocated to Lillestrøm. It is just a 10 minute train ride north of Oslo, so that location is very convenient as well.
The upside of the new venue is that it has more capacity and feels a little more spacious. The rooms for the talks are bigger and more convenient without the steep lectern setup that the old venue had. Overall, I really liked the new location, and wouldn’t mind at all if it became the permanent solution.
This year’s conference had a Roman theme and this really shone through in the exhibition hall. All the exhibitors used some elements aligned with the theme in their booths and the food stalls where accordingly named. Talking about the food. JavaZone is well-known for their food concept. They serve it in the exhibition hall all day long. This means that there are no specific lunch hours with the unavoidable lunch queues. Attendees simply go and grab something to eat whenever they have a break from the talks or feel like a meal or snack.
My talk “The Past, Present, and Future of Enterprise Java” was scheduled for the morning on Thursday. Despite that this was the first slot on the day after the conference party on Wednesday evening quite a few showed up to see this walk through the history of Enterprise Java all the way up to what is in the pipeline for the next versions of Jakarta EE.
The factory that produce the JavaZone Viking Duke has burned down, so there were only a few left. I was lucky enough to get one before they ran out of them. Before the conference on Wednesday morning, I had a short run around the castle and parliament building in Oslo.
