Fried Saacke, kicked off JavaLand 2017 today. It's totally full, and in a new theater within Fantasialand. We have 110 lectures, 8 workshop sessions, and 16 community activities this year. He admitted that not everything will go as smoothly as we might like, but we are doing the best. The biggest practical challenge is throughput.

He talked about DukeCon, which may be a separate conference, but currently is an online sidecar with JavaLand.

Tobias Frech talked about the community activities: exchange with eachother. In the Quantum show floor.

  • Java Innovation Lab

  • Meet the JUGS

  • Early Adapter's Area

  • Workshops

16:30, Group photo outside Quantum

Use the #JavaLand twitter handle.

German speaking JavaLand slack group #jlca. Click here. Ask here where you can win a robot.

This year they had a JavaLand4Kids day before the conference.

Some more numbers about speakers, staff, exhititors, sponsors, student helpers.

He specially called out that he invited Oracle to be a sponsor, but they declined.

Digitialization of the REWE Group

Mentioned the importance of being a good server leader. So glad to see him mention this.

Three big digitializaion efforts before joining REWE. Related his recruitment story from REWE group. Key point: never compromise, at all. But this is in conflict with the notion of being a servant leader. He keeps mentioning that life is short. Mentions you are only as good as you think you are.

Listed some business numbers for REWE. Lines of business: Food retail, Tourism, DIY.

Car analogy: if the car keeps driving ok, why fix it?

What does he mean by digitalizaion? Related ProMarkt story: Metaphor of Bezos cuckold story. Basically: take on the "software is eating the world" meme and reorganize the company according to it. Story: how he asked them to change the company car policy. This is an example of the changes he was trying to bring.

Similar story: the corporate suite and the whiteboard: he did not compromise.

I would like to him to give more details of what they do from day to day. It was all about the environment.

Now he gets to it. Slide showing non-digital businesses and corresponding digitalized business. Old: World of Music, ProMarkt, Gortz, Morrisons. New: iTunes, Spotify, amazon, zalando, ocado. Mentioned the he will sell his Morrisons shares short. Morrisons: they compromised by partnering with Ocado and Amazon. They are giving all of their knowledge away to someone who is going to eat you in the next years.

Have to rethink the whole business. Starting with: what is a store? He thinks of it as a mini warehouse that is perfectly positioned in neighborhoods. Difference between self service business and service business. Gave an aside: build your technology yourself. Don't buy from vendors, otherwise you become too constrained.