Raible Designs

OSCON: Where are the good parties at?

It seemed to work pretty well for JavaOne, so let's try it for OSCON...

This week, the best Open Source Conference will take place in the beautiful city of Portland, Oregon. I went to high school just south of Portland (Salem) for a couple years and my parents still live there. Portland is one of my favorite cities, my parents are two of my favorite people and OSCON is one of my favorite conferences. Seems like an excellent combination for a really fun week.

I'll be flying to Portland with Jack and Abbie on Tuesday. Wednesday I'll be at the show speaking; Thursday I'll be there listening and likely blogging. I hope to catch a happy hour on at least one of those nights. Friday, my family and I will be heading to the Oregon Brew Fest followed by a night at The Kennedy School.

So when and where are the good parties at during OSCON 2008? Here's what I know about so far - I'll add to this list as comments start flowing in:

• Wednesday: RedMonk at Kells (8-10), OpenSolaris/MySQL/Zend at DoubleTree Hotel (8-12)
• Thursday: SourceForge Awards Party at Jupiter Hotel (6-9), BeerForge III at Bossanova (8-11)

As far as finding me at the show, it's probably easiest to follow me on Twitter.

Update: A reader e-mailed me about http://upcoming.yahoo.com/tag/oscon. This seems to be an excellent source of OSCON party information. I've updated the above list with the ones that look good on Wednesday and Thursday.

Proposal accepted for OSCON 2008

From an e-mail I received earlier this afternoon:

We are pleased to accept the following proposal for OSCON 2008.

* Web Frameworks of the Future: Flex, GWT, Grails and Rails

It has been scheduled for 16:30 on 23 Jul 2008.

My Abstract:

What if the choices in web framework was reduced to 4? If RIA are the way of the future, it's possible that these 4 frameworks are the best choices for this development paradigm. This session will explore these frameworks, as well as entertain many other's opinions on the future of web development.

RESTful backends are easy to create with both Rails and Grails. Ajax frontends are simple to create and maintain with GWT. Flex gives you flash and a pretty UI. If you're an HTML developer, Rails allows you to quickly develop MVC applications. If you're a Java Developer, GWT + Grails might be a match made in heaven. This session is designed to help you learn more about each framework and decide which combination is best for your project.

I'm really looking forward to learning about GWT and Flex in the coming months. If you have any experience (or opinions) about the abstract above, I'd love to hear it. The louder the better.

For those who haven't been, OSCON is one of those truly special conferences. Possible reasons:

• It's only an hour from my parent's house
• It's a beautiful time of year in Portland
• It's always the same weekend as the Oregon Brewers Festival
• It's a kickass conference with the greatest diversity of Open Source Committers

I'm going for all 4 reasons and even made a reservation to stay at The Kennedy School. Should be a fun show.

OSCON 2007: Comparing Java Web Frameworks

This afternoon I delivered my Comparing Java Web Frameworks talk at OSCON in Portland. I told attendees I'd post it here afterwards, so here it is:Download Comparing Java Web Frameworks Presentation (5.1 MB)

For comments on this presentation from earlier this year, see related postings from ApacheCon EU and JA-SIG. This presentation is pretty much the same as the one from ApacheCon and JA-SIG, except it has a different theme and I chopped out the Sweetspots section (due to time constraints).

Portland is great this time of year, but unfortunately I won't be sticking around. I'm heading down to Salem to work remotely for a couple of days, returning for the Oregon Brewers Festival on Friday and heading back to Denver on Saturday. I'll be glad when July is over - I've traveled to a new state every week.

The Perfect Summer Vacation?

OSCON is July 23-27. The Oregon Brewers Festival is July 26-29. If you combine those two with a night at McMenamins Kennedy School, it sounds like the perfect summer vacation to me.