Alla Redko from the Java Documentation team shares her impressions of the two-day developer conference in Moscow.
All the JavaOne conferences start with the keynotes and this time wasn't an exception. The conference hall was crowded with the developers from different local and international IT companies. Grigori Labzovsky and Valery Lanovenko, the directors of St. Petersburg and Moscow Oracle sites, cordially greeted the participants and set the tone of the event. They passed the baton to Nandini Ramani who launched the JavaOne Russia conference and announced Oracle strategy and roadmap for the Java technologies. Technical keynote presentations led by Stephen Chin started with the Kiosk demonstration, continued by the overview of the Embedded technologies and an excellent success story of using Java ME 3.2, and concluded with the bright JavaFX 3D presentation given by Jim Weaver.
The Java Client Technologies track started shortly after the keynote with the presentation about the new FX Features in JDK 8 by Jim Weaver. He gave an overview of the new FX capabilities, demonstrated the Metronome demo, and explained how developers could benefit from using Lambda Expressions. Being a professional technology ambassador, Jim presented with passion and enthusiasm actively encouraging developers to join the FX community and participate in the OpenJFX project.
Sergey Troshin and Andrey Petushkov from St. Petersburg Development Center gave a presentation about the Java ME Embedded technologies. They talked about the diversity of mobile devices, introduced the benefits that Java has brought to the embedded world, and provided solutions for Java optimization for embedded environments. I was particularly pleased with the fact that Sergey and Andrey named the docs.oracle.com/javame as the key source of information about Java ME technologies and products.
The second day of the conference started with Rapsberry Pi Nighthacking by Stephen Chin. Because the number of participants was relatively small, he turned the presentation into an informal discussion and live demonstration that were cordially received by the audience. Everyone in the hall was impressed with the demo run on Raspberry Pi and Chalkboard Electronics Touchscreen (tablet).
Jim Weaver continued presenting at the Java Client Technologies track and totally captivated participants with the presentation about powerful capabilities of JavaFX 3D. He showed how to create 3D primitive shapes, apply materials and textures, map images to the shapes. If you’re thinking about creating a cylindrical or cubic representation of the Earth, ask Jim!
Daniel Blaukopf, talked about Java SE on embedded devices. What impressed me the most was that his presentation had been developed totally in JavaFX (instead of traditional Microsoft Power Point) and run on a Raspberry Pi. Daniel gave an overview of the Java SE Embedded platform, demonstrated the supported devices and proof concepts, and showed a live JavaFX application running on a Raspberry Pi.
The last but not the least conference event was the hands-on-lab with the title “Playing to the Strength of JavaFX and HTML5” given by Jim Weaver. Because the hands-on-lab was based on the WebView tutorial that is part of JavaFX documentation, Jim invited me to assist. It has been a great and totally new experience helping about the lab and answering tricky but interesting questions.
The organizers of JavaOne Russia are going to publish the conference materials at the Content Catalog. Watch for updates at http://www.oracle.com/javaone/ru-en/index.html.
— Alla Redko