Edited: 2017-02-23: Recommend additional session.

I am blessed with the opportunity to speak at DevNexus again this year, after having spoken there in in 2014 and 2015. Pratik, Vincent, Gunnar and the whole Atlanta JUG do a great job putting on this very community focused show. It is the largest developer event in the southeastern U.S., an area of the country that vitally needs more such events. There are so many great session from so many great speakers, though. You really can't go wrong with any path. Here are my picks for sessions I plan to attend.

Wednesday — Workshop Day

  • Building Reactive Applications

    A full day workshop with the legendary Venkat Subramaniam? Yes please. Venkat's presentation skills are legendary and his humble delivery creates a learning environment that is sure to enrich your career. It's probably booked out, though it doesn't say so on the conference site.

Thursday — Conference Day One

  • 09:15 Sidney Marcus Auditorium Don't walk away from Complexity, Run (Keynote)

    Sticking with the Venkat theme, this is the keynote, so obviously I'll be attending. The theme of "complexity as bugbear" is an old saw, but Venkat is sure to offer a fresh take on it.

  • 10:30 A302 Building a private CI/CD pipeline with Java and Docker in the Cloud

    In the spirit of DevOps, we all need to try to be as full stack as possible. Baruch Sadogursky knows his stuff, in this space in particular. We use Artifactory at Oracle. The 75 minute length of the DevNexus session should allow him to stretch out and really teach some skills.

  • 13:00 A316 Tuning with Poor Tools and Cheap Drink

    Kirk is one of the leading experts in the world on Java performance tuning. We are lucky to have him at DevNexus.

  • 14:30 A411 Reactive Thinking in Java

    Yakov Fain is a provocative and thoughtful speaker, I look forward to his thoughts on this hot topic.

  • 16:00 My session is in the next slot, in room A311, but if I wasn't speaking then, I'd go see The Art of Java Performance from Jonathan Ross.

  • 17:30 A302 Docker tips and tricks for Java Developers

    Docker is a big enough of a pain in the rear to make a "tips and tricks" session well worthwhile. I haven't seen a talk from Mr. Tsang before, but his credentials speak for themselves. Also, it may be nice to find kindred spirits who are also leverage Docker and smooth out its sharp edges.

Friday — Conference Day Two