Soundbyte 332: Speak!

-

Speak! That is exactly what I have been doing for the past few weeks. In fact I have just returned from a trip to Stockholm, Sweden, where I was invited to present a couple sessions at the Jfokus conference. Jfokus is one of the leading software development conferences in the Nordics and from 2012 onwards I have been part of the conference a handful of times. Besides delivering my own talks, it is also about meeting lots of familiar faces from all over the world coming together for the first time of this year. And with everything that is going on in the Java and Cloud world nowadays, there was lots of catching up to do.

On and off

I have not only been speaking on-stage lately, but also a lot of off-stage speaking has been going on. Not only at conferences, but at all Luminis kerns. In an attempt to put actions to my changed role I have been meeting with quite some people over the last few weeks. We’ve had interesting conversations, and together we are trying to put focus and commitment to having Luminis’ reputation benefit from this renewed focus on outreach. If we haven’t been speaking yet, and you feel you have something to contribute, please let me know!

For the next three months alone we have many opportunities coming up to share stories about the technology that we are passionate about at Luminis. Both inside and outside the Netherlands. And it is not only myself that will be doing this, but a number of coworkers are joining me at conferences within the Netherlands, and all over the world.

DevCon

One of the speaking opportunities that I really look forward to, is obviously our very own Luminis DevCon. Although some of our concept has been copied by others, we still have a unique format to be very proud of. All of the technical content is being presented by our own colleagues. And whether they are experienced speakers or not, they all give it their very best to talk about things that they have done with our customers, tools or technology that they are passionate about, and last but not least a few extra nerdy things, because well…that is who we are too.

As I am writing this, we are in the process of publishing talks to the website. Like Denise already mentioned in the previous soundbyte, we ran a very successful internal Call for Papers for the fourth consecutive year. A program committee selected all but one of the talks out of all the submitted talks. The final talk was selected by way of a popular vote. All employees of Luminis were allowed to vote on five pre-selected papers. After a week of voting, the winner has now been added to the DevCon line-up, completing the program.

And there is more…

This year we have expanded the program of DevCon to contain an extra parallel track of sessions, increasing the number of sessions from 16 to 20. No doubt this will make it even harder for you to choose, but this way we can offer even more content and showcase more of the cool things that we are passionate about. All of that content will be recorded by the way. And it will be available for free a few weeks after the conference. Because at Luminis we like to share. And because we are very proud of our colleagues of course! 

At the moment we are still working on the line-up for the keynotes and everything that will be going on in between the sessions. We have a lot of colleagues that in some way or the other are involved in making this the best DevCon yet. Even though the past couple of conferences have set that barrier quite high already. Some extra pairs of hands are always welcome, so speak up if you want to help us succeed in that goal.

Speak up!

And now for the music. After taking it easy for the last two soundbytes I think it is time to dial it up to the heavier genre again. The band I’ve chosen has been featured before in a soundbyte a long time ago, so you might have heard of them. They are Godsmack. I came across this band myself when they where playing as support act at a Metallica concert in Gelredome, Arnhem a long time ago. Since then the band has risen to fame and they no longer play support acts, but easily fill entire stadiums themselves. Taken from their aptly-titled fourth album ‘IV’ (2006), this is ‘Speak’. Now turn the volume up, and get energized for the week to come!