After attending several Java conferences world wide, this was my
very first time at Devoxx. Here are some items I found that happens
only at Devoxx ...
Pioneers of theater-style
seating - This not only provides comfortable seating
for each attendee but the screens are very clearly visible to
everybody in the room.
Intellectual level of
attendees is very high - Read more explanation on the Java
EE 6 lab blog. In short, a lab, 1/3 of the content
delivered at Devoxx 2011, could not be completed at other
developer days in more than 1/3 the time.
Snack box for lunches
- Even though this suits well to the healthy lifestyle of
multiple-snacks-during-a-day style but leaves attendees hungry
sooner in the day. The longer breaks before the next snack in
the evening does not help at all. Fortunately, Azure cupcakes
and Android ice creams turned out to be handy. I finally carried
my own apple :-)
Wrist band instead of lanyard
- The good part about this is that once tied to your hand then
you are less likely to forget in your room. But OTOH you are a
pretty much a branded conference attendee all through out the
city. It was cost effective as it costed 20c as opposed to 1
euro for the lanyard.
Live streaming from
theater #8 (the biggest room) on parleys.com
All talks recorded and
released on parleys.com over next year. This allows
attendees to not to miss any session and watch replay at their
own leisure. Stephan promised to start sharing the sessions by
mid December this year.
No need to pre-register for a
session - This is true for most of the conferences but
bigger rooms (+ overflow room for key sessions) provide
sufficient space for all those who want to attend the session.
And of course all sessions are available on parleys.com anyway!
Community votes on whiteboard
- Devoxx attendees gets a chance to vote on topics ranging from
their favorite non-Java language, operating system, or love from
Oracle. Captured pictures at the end of Day 2 are shown below.
Movie on the last but one
night - This year it was The Adventures of Tintin and
was lots of fun.
Fries with mayo - This
is a typical Belgian thing.
Guys going in ladies room to avoid the long queues ... wow!
Tweet wall everywhere and
I mean literally everywhere, in rooms, hallways, front desk, and other places. The tweet picking algorithm was not
very clear as I never saw my tweet appear on the wall ;-) You
can also watch it at wall.devoxx.com.
Cozy speaker dinner
with great food and wine
List of parallel and upcoming
sessions displayed on the screen - This makes the
information more explicit with the attendees.
REST API with multiple mobile
clients - This API is also used by some other
conferences as well. And there always is iphone.devoxx.com.
Steering committee members
were recognized multiple times. The committee members
were clearly identifiable wearing red hoodies.
The wireless SSID was
intuitive "Devoxx" but hidden to avoid some crap from Microsoft
Windows. All of 9000 addresses were used up most of the times
with each attendee having multiple devices. A 1 GB fibre optic
cable was stretched to Metropolis to support the required
network bandwidth. Stephan is already planning to upgrade the
equipment and have a better infrastructure next year.
Free water, soda, juice in a cooler
Kinect connected to TV
screens so that attendees can use their hands to browse through
the list of sesssions.
#devoxxblog, #devoxxwomen, #devoxxfrance, #devoxxgreat,
#devoxxsuggestions
And Devoxx attendees are called Devoxxians ... how cool is that ? :-)
What other things do you think happen only at Devoxx ?
And now the pictures from the community whiteboard:
And a more complete album (including bigger pics of community votes) is available below:
