Tuesday 3 February 2015

JFokus 2015 First Impressions

In the centre of Stockholm, on a snowy first week of February, is the start of JFokus 2015. When I say cool it's currently -2°C with a "feels like" -11°C. The conference is a three day event, the first consisting of tutorials, the second and third are traditional  conference session styles. 

I came unprepared for Stockholm, and for future reference (mainly for myself) packing the extra items is recommended:
  • A hat. Only the speakers get the cool JFokus red hats!
  • Proper shoes, the snow is amazing here. It falls and everything just continues on as normal. The only effort I have seen of any snow being removed was a guy shovelling it off the roof of Stockholm Central Station. At least there was a barrier around the target area, on the pavement.
  • A decent coat for when you're outside, a fleece doesn't really do it.
When I got to the hotel on Monday I felt very unwell, got an early check-in and went straight to bed. I missed the majority of the first day except a few beers with RaoulRichard and Heather. The hotel bar was alive with conversations about the VM Tech Summit, which sounds to have proved popular with the attendees. 

Tuesday morning I got up and explored the hotel prior to the keynote starting. The hotel is next to Central Station, but navigating to it seems impossible. Almost everyone has a story about how they ended up in the wrong place or took about 6-7 different streets to get there. Waterside is a decent venue, with lots of space for the 1700 conference delegates.


The conference kicked off with a guy with a tape measure doing some robotic style dancing on the stage. My initial reaction was:
The "developer" was the joined by some other dancers to a pretty decent routine. The stage was then taken by Mattias Karlsson, sadly we did not get to see any of his dance moves. The main room is impressive here, with room for most of the delegates.


On day 2 I attended only a few talks.
I am planning to write up each of the sessions over the coming weeks, along with some sessions from tomorrow. 

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