Assorted Devoxx Notes

• it does not matter what your presentation is about, it is all in how well you are prepared and how you deliver it. The best presentations I have seen (admittedly, I haven't seen many, most of my time being busy in our booth) there were Joshua Bloch's and (unexpectedly) Ivar Jacobson's. Bloch gave a keynote on Java enums. Exciting keynote about enums! The mere mention of the subject should be enough to put you to sleep, yet the keynote had the right pace, engaged the audience and was pleasant to listen to. Ivar Jacobson's presentation about "being smart" - was just a bunch of semi-obvious observations on how to run and how not to run a software project. Semi-obvious yes, but delivered with class and style, without pretense and with much humor. Just splendid. On the other side of the spectrum were blokes that were able to butcher even the most interesting subjects. "Effective pairing" was one example - I had great hopes for this one (being agile and all), but the presenter was simply unprepared and was seemingly trying to improvise on the spot. I know many good improvisers, but this bloke was no Eddie van Halen. Sorry.

• working as a booth-babe is a lot of HARD work. You meet many interesting people (and many quite scary ones too), but around 4pm you start to feel terminal exhaustion. Note to self: for the next event like this, invest in a pair of Chuck Taylor Converse All Stars. Or Doc Martens.

• the simplest ideas for a booth that attract people work best. However, you have to be also active in the booth to take advantage of the idea. The most attractive booth on Devoxx was the one of the company called "Logica" - they didn't bother with setting up elaborately-looking booth (like Sun or Adobe did), their trick was simply hiring a beautiful girl who served awesome cappuccino. I was there at least four times a day (imagine caffeine levels in my organism), and so was everybody else. However, despite being at their booth numerous times, I have no idea what Logica is and what they do. Nor do I care. The guys at the booth did not even try to talk to me even once - they were busy sitting around their little table and chatting among themselves.
  

• Amsterdam is a much cooler and visitor-friendly city than Antwerp. And no, I am not talking about pot and the red-light district. It is just that the whole place is organized towards making people feel relaxed and having a good time, while Antwerp is a bit stiff.

• Antwerp's train station has four (four!) levels of platforms and is overall quite beautiful. I actually enjoyed spending time there. Amsterdam's train station on the other hand seems to be under construction since they started having trains there (or at least since I started visiting the place, which was quite a long time ago). It is the place you run out off immediately and don't ever want to come back to.

• opportunity to meet fellow developers that work on tools that you use, is quite priceless. For me, drinking beer with JetBrains and ALMWorks folks was definitely the most fruitful and high-return moment of the whole Devoxx.

• railway network in the Benelux is quite simply awesome and is the best way to move around there. I suppose the small size of the country is the key factor, but still, you can catch a train to anyplace you want pretty much every half an hour or so.

• the part of Belgium with Antwerp in it is pretty much the integral part of the Netherlands. The people, the language, the attitude, it is very much Dutch. The part with Brussels on the other hand, is more French than regular French. Nobody speaks English to save their life, appliances in the hotel are only half functioning and the hotel crew is absolutely unable to issue a correct invoice. Just like in Paris. These two parts of the country are as different as day and night. The only glue that is keeping Belgium together seems to be beer. But believe me, if brewing beer is the only point of having Belgium, this for me is reason enough - their beer is simply the best in the world.