Last week was JFokus, and a great time was had by all. This was the third time for me, and I’m really glad they moved the location to Stockholm Waterfront. Last time I went, we were crammed into a cinema complex with far too little floorspace, no wifi and very limited toilet facilities. This year though, the location was great and the surprisingly good coffee kept flowing all throughout the three days.
There seemed to be a good deal of interest in Scala at the event, but I’m not sure this actually reflects some kind of actual change in the Java ecosphere. Mostly, it were small, hip, consultancies doing the promotion, and I have a gnawing suspicion that they don’t have much Scala work lined up per se, but are instead using Scala to get the attention of potential recruits. Time will tell.
I’m a pretty introverted guy, and don’t really feel that comfortable around a lot of people. Most of the time during the big breaks I found myself wishing for a laptop so that I could get hacking instead of having to wander round aimlessly pretending to feel at home in the crowd. Fate, however, seated me beside Chris Richardson (of Cloud Foundry fame) during lunch the first day, and we had a pretty good discussion, even though my english was still getting up to speed. For some reason I also managed to corner Greg Luck during the tuesday bar and talk to him about Ehcache. Both were very nice guys, and I’d like to thank them both for helping me come out of my shell a bit.