JavaPolis 2006 Kick-off

L-R: Guy, Jo, Frederik, Sven

Only 8 months before JavaPolis 2006 starts, so it's time to brain-storm about this years formula, content, tracks, new ideas etc.
Our kick-off meeting, organized at the Dolmen offices, often starts with some warm food (unfortunately not for me because I speak too much).
Just quickly looking at the pictures from last years kick-off meeting you can identify some patterns, do you notice them ?

The Steering members

For this years edition we've invited 2 new steering members; Guy Crets and Erwin Geirnaert.

Guy is managing partner of Apogado and has a main focus on Integration, that is why he'll be identifying speakers and topics in the messaging environment (SOA, EAI, ESB, etc). Last year Guy presented Secure and Reliable Web Services which brings us to our second new member...

Erwin is partner of Zion Security and as the name expects has an interesting focus on internet and application security. From that angle Erwin will identify some speakers and topics for the 2006 security track. Erwin spoke during JavaPolis 2004 on how to hack J2EE applications, you can check out his talk here.

The 5th Edition

So in December we can blow out 5 candles on our JavaPolis cake, this means we need to do something special for all attendees and hopefully have a few surprises during those 5 days as well !?
We've decided to organize JavaPolis again at the MetroPolis venue, by adding an extra 5th room during the conference and an overflow room, the venue will hopefully be big enough for 2006. We'll also have 10 minutes in between talks so JavaPolians have enough time to move from room to room.

Some new ideas

Based on feedback from different attendees we're evaluating if we can host the plugin bazaar upstairs where the main cinema hall is located. By placing long tables on both sides of the hall this setup can be used by the plugin bazaar but more importantly by JavaPolians who want to hookup their portable to surf, reload batteries or just download the latest API's from the web.

Which brings me to an important topic: WiFi access. We're thinking of providing all attendees 'FREE' WIFI during the 5 days of the Java fest in all rooms and exhibition area. However because we can not use the provider at the venue (it doesn't work and it's not free) we'll need to setup our own WiFi hotspots and evaluate what impact this will have on our JP budget and probably entrance fee...

A new opportunity is the introduction of the 'Plugin sponsor'. This sponsor package will allow smaller Java companies and/or startups to be officially present at the JavaPolis conference. I'm very interested to see how this will get picked up ?!

The RAD Race

Evaluating the success of last years RAD Race another race is planned in 2006. However we're limited in the number of teams that we can jury, as a result of that we'll send out around September an RFP for the RAD Race. Based on the respons and some to be defined selection criteria, we'll select the 12 RAD Race teams.

Dress up JavaPolis 2006!

We've another 2 months to finalize our JavaPolis 2006 theme.
This year, we would like open our JavaPolis theme for competition. So let your imagination go wild and send us your most creative visual and a headline in a viewable format to Valérie, the deadline is May 26th, 2006.
The theme winner will get a free 5-days entrance pass and will see his/her theme on all merchandising material of JavaPolis 2006.

Good luck!

The Tracks

We've also decided to rearrange some of the tracks, this is how it probably will be setup :

Methodology, lead by Stephan Janssen
Architecture, lead by Robin Mulkers and Jo Wyns
Mobile, lead by David Delabassee
Messaging, lead by Guy Crets
Enterprise, lead by [~bst@jcs.be] and Hugo Brand
Java Core, lead by Sven Beauprez
RIA, Web, ... lead by Frederik Santens
Hot Beans (Dyn. Languages, Real Time, ...) lead by David Delabassee
Security, lead by Erwin Geirnaert

JavaPolis Survey

Looking at the official survey and comments received from our attendees, the above initiatives and changes will hopefully improve your overall Conference experience. If we now all bring our sister along we can also address the comment "We want more girls!!"