I'm proud to say I've been at every JavaLand since it's inception in 2014, and blessed to say I'm attending again this year. My good friend Oliver Szymanski and I are teaching at the Schulungstag. The title of our class is: “Full Stack Java Microservices with Marathon, Docker and HTML”, but before our class there is a jam packed conference schedule to absorb. Here are my session picks. Note that most of day 2 is in one room, Quantum 3+4. Knowing the short session duration and the difficulty of getting from one room to another, this is probably a good conference tip: stay put in one room if you can.

Tuesday 28 March

  • 08:30 Quantum 1+2 CDI 2.0 is Upon Us

    Unique this year, there is a full lineup of sessions *even before* Fried's famous conference greeting! What could possibly be worth getting up for at this hour? CDI 2.0 of course! Since its introduction in Java EE 6, CDI has been at the heart of Java EE, and it is one of the key pieces of Java EE 8. The session by spec lead Antoine Sabot-Durand will lay out what's new and notable.

  • 09:30 Silverado Theater Begrüßung

    This session, in German, lays out the highlights of the conference and gets you in the mood.

  • 10:00 Silverado Theater The role of the CDO as Chief Product Owner

    This keynote promises from the Chief Digital Office of the REWE group will give a peek into the operation of this 50 billion EUR annual revenue retail giant. Unless you work inside of such an operation, it is rare to get such insight.

  • 11:00 Neptun Panel Discussion - Java EE 8 Status

    I'll be participating in this panel discussion in my role as co-spec lead for two of the Oracle JSRs that are a key part of Java EE 8: Servlet and JSF.

  • 12:00 Silverado Theater JDK 8 Lambdas: Cool Code that Doesn't Use Streams

    Simon is a seasoned speaker how knows how to get his point across quickly and clearly, something the 40 minute sessions of JavaLand require. I like this topic since so much of the Lambda content out there also forces you to contend with the equally complex, and powerful stream API. It will be nice to hear one without the other.

  • 13:00 Quantum 1+2 Serverlose Web-Architekturen mit der AWS-Cloud-Infrastruktur

    Das Niko has a long history of being on the cutting edge. He was all over the promising Project Avatar, for example. I've been a fan of the concept of “serverless” but have not yet invested time in gaining any depth of understanding aside from my simple observation that the technology itself seems to be the logical end of the road we started to walk with the beginning of inversion of control. Let's see how Niko makes me smart.

  • 14:00 Silverado Theater Fast & Efficient Microservices w/ binary protocol - gRPC 101

    I've been a fan of Ray Tsang's easygoing, yet deceptively information packed style since I attended his Docker Tips and Tricks session at DevNexus last week. He's great at live coding. gRPC is a compelling alternative to REST, and those of us old enough to remember CORBA will appreciate this technology that promises the performance of a binary protocol with the simplicity of REST.

  • 15:00 Wintergarden Serverless Application - Who the heck needs a Server?

    I want more, not less, of serverless. This one looks like it is higher level than Niko's. Plus, I haven't seen anyone aside from Mike Keith talk about Backend as a Service.

  • 16:00 Wintergarden Going forward with Java EE Next?

    I am confident that David's session will replace the question mark with an exclamation point, as he share's Oracle's vision for the future of Java EE.

  • 17:00 Silverado Theater Keynote: Listening to the Design Pressures

    I met Mr. Mechanical Sympathy at GeekOut 2015 and was taken by his in-depth "war stories" approach to presenting. Martin is unquestionably a world leader in high performance systems, don't miss this one.

Wednesday 29 March

  • 09:00 Wintergarden Migrating to Java 9 Modules

    Modules are to Java 9 what Lambdas are to Java 8: the biggest feature. In fact, in my opinion since they are far more fundamental and long awaited. This talk looks like a great way to get ready for the most potentially disruptive feature to hit Java since annotations in J2SE 1.5.

  • 10:00 Eventhalle Field Notes of a Command Line Ninja

    I've done enough pair programming over the years to know that command line ninja skills are not a given, but I wish they were. Now, I'm no ninja, but I do ok, and I certainly know the value in investing even a little time in being more productive in this foundational skill. Besides, many of the Rockstars I interviewed listed "tools mastery" as one of the most important skills.

  • 11:00 Neptun Resilient Software Design Patterns

    From the abstract, this looks like a good introduction to the hows and whys of microservices.

  • 12:00 Wintergarden Continuous Delivery im Enterprise-Umfeld mit Docker, Ansible und Jenkins

    Trying to do something useful on this ambitious topic in 40 minutes is worth a look. This talk also looks interesting because it has a real-world basis.

  • 13:00 Quantum 3+4 Microprofile, Apache TomEE Now & Beyond

    I like how MicroProfile is referred to as a "pre-specification effort". As a fan of JCP, I hope that proves to be true. Let's see what they have been up to.

  • 14:00 Quantum 3+4 Klein, leicht, modular - Java EE goes Microservices

    Any talk that points out the obvious synergy between Java EE and microservices, rather than decrying their irreconcilability, is worth a look in.

  • 15:00 Quantum 3+4 Reactive Domain Driven Design

    It will be interesting to see how these two memes come together.

  • 16:00 Quantum 3+4 Lagom - die richtige Dosis Microservice

    LightBend, formerly TypeSafe, were the early movers in the latest resurgence of the idea of microservices. As authors of the famous Reactive Manifesto, they had a jump on the rest of the herd. I've been hearing about Lagom for a while, but this is my first opportunity to attend a session about it. Interestingly, the presenter appears not to be a LightBend employee, which may speak well to the prospects for the objectivity of the session.