TSSJS / Day JCR Cup 2008

TSSJS

I returned from TSSJS this weekend, and it was quite an experience. In addition to speaking, I also attended some great sessions. I was particularly impressed with John Davies presentation ‘Extreme Transaction Processing’. Not only did I enjoy his session, but it rekindled my interest in GigaSpaces. I also enjoyed David Nuescheler’s presentation ‘Kickstarting JCR’. I have been working with Day Communique for a few years now (and as an extension CRX), but I always felt that a simpler approach was missing. Well, this new CRX/Sling application might be exactly what I was looking for. While some clients may require a full featured web content management system, I believe that not all will. Some may suffice with a rather lightweight application.

I also had the privilege of meeting some of the great pillars of the Java community. I have had the opportunity to work with Eugene Ciurana a couple of times in the past. Recently he suggested that I submit a presentation based on some of the WCM work I had previously done. Many thanks to Eugene for encouraging me to try this whole speaking thing. I was also fortunate to be introduced to Joseph Ottinger by Eugene.

On Friday I gave my presentation. I was also impressed with the speakers at these conferences. Not only in their knowledge of Java, but also there speaking abilities. Well, I can now say I have a whole new level of respect for these guys. I did not realize how difficult it would be to follow in their steps. Particularly guys like Ted Neward who are quite amazing to see up there. Seeing as this was my first time, I do believe I learned a few things.

1. Preparation, Preparation, Preparation

I had finished my slides a few weeks in advance. I had gone over this presentation a 100 times in my head. However, it would seem that the way words flow out of ones mouth doesn’t quite follow what one envisions in his or her head. In retrospect I would like to have practiced verbally before my peers or even just my family/friends. Actually I should have done this several times leading up to the actual presentation. I happen to run Ubuntu and week before the conference I realized that it had issues with dual monitors. I managed to get everything working perfectly at my office, but alas it did not go quite so perfect once on stage and trying to connect to the projector at the conference.

2. Eye Candy

As a result of my issues with Ubuntu, I substituted my laptop with another that had my presentation. This new laptop did not have my demo or screenshots though. A friend of mine who attended my session provided me with some immediate feedback. He said that my presentation could have used some more images. I happened to have a few, but not too many. I think even if I had the demo in place, I still could have used a few more images ala diagrams and what not in my actual slides.

3. Slow Down

I believe I moved through my presentation a little bit faster than I should have. I like to keep my slides fairly basic and then take time to expand on them. Like I mentioned in my first point here, in my mind I talked about a number of things related to each slide. However, during the presentation it seems like I moved through the slides too quick and I didn’t always expand on them the way I had envisioned.

These are what I assume are the biggest lessons to be learned. At least this is what I learned. I hope to present again though. I figure I’ll learn from my mistakes and improve on each presentation.

Day JCR Cup 2008

It was during the ‘Kickstarting JCR’ presentation that I would about the Day JCR Cup 2008. Basically you have to build an application using CRX/Sling. The prize is a brand new MacBook Pro. I certainly can’t so no to that. Prior to this content I had been thinking about writing a tag library to add WCM to any JEE application. I was going to communicate directly to the repository with a little help from Spring. However, after this JCR presentation I decided to deviate a little bit. I think I’ll now take advantage of CRX/Sling to do a little work for me. I will probably use a RESTful approach with AJAX to accomplish my goal now. Below you can find links for both the Day JCR Cup 2008 and my taglib project (Google Code).

Day JCR Cup 2008
JCR-TAGLIB