Cegal roasting their way through JavaZone 2023

Last week, Cegal participated in one of the biggest developer events in Norway: JavaZone 2023. The event occurred at the Oslo Spectrum, filled with inspiring talks, practical workshops, and fun competitions. The Cegal stand drew additional attention this year with a provoking AI Face Roasting Application. 

The conference started with a workshop day, where participants could get hands-on experience and learn about Domain-Driven Design, accessibility testing, and using Spring Boot 3, among other things. The next two days were full of presentations and networking opportunities. All participants were also invited to AweZone, where they could share their ideas over a glass of beer. One of the unique things about this year's JavaZone was the AI area, where talks were related to data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.

Cegal prepared a stand to promote its brand among developers. To entertain our visitors, we used an AI Face Roast Application developed by Manfred Bjørlin and Nuno Cardoso. This application uses Microsoft Azure Facial Recognition API to describe the picture and ChatGPT to roast a person. The application had a big success among stand-visitors.

Read the article: Learning AI integration by letting a chatbot insult you.

While JavaZone mainly focuses on Java technology, it also covers other aspects of software development. All of the talks from this and previous years are available on Vimeo. You can also navigate to this year's program on the JavaZone webpage. Video links are provided for all the talks.

Here are some talks worth checking out:  

• Marit van Dijk gave a great talk about project dependencies and tools that can be used to scan and update them. This presentation focuses on JetBrains tool stack but also gives an overview of Dependabot and Renovate.
• A brief overview of GitHub actions. In this talk, Andres Almiray and Ixchel Ruiz cover the basics of GitHub actions and share many examples.
• Josh Long presented amazing live coding of Spring Boot 3.
• Alexandra Diem from Gjensidige presented on building a data platform using DevOps.
• For those interested in JVM performance, check out Sanne Grinovero's presentation from Red Hat.
• If you want some entertainment along with a historical lesson, take a journey through the history of music made with code with Anders Norås.
• Frontend enthusiasts who want to know about npm and the possible pitfalls and rules of thumb when using it, check the talk by Terje Karlsen.

As you can see, JavaZone was packed with thrilling talks that covered a wide range of topics. I encourage you to explore the talks, share your thoughts with colleagues, and maybe even make your own presentation at JavaZone next year.

A special thank you to Sarah Rayfuse, who designed both stickers, as shown in the banner for this post, and t-shirts with a Cegal tiger, as seen below, in this year's circus theme for our Cegal gang. 

Finally, I would like to thank all Cegalians who participated and helped with organizing the stand at JavaZone: Barnabas Davoti, Prakhar Srivastav, Phong Pham, Vikash Ranjan, Melanie Østbøll, Håvard Johannessen, Vishal Singh, Lars Liven, Magnus Holmen, Ellina Ivleva, Knut Ivar Skogland, Nikola Jovanovic, Lars Oftedal, Vitaly Semenov, Daria Kormacheva, Jennifer Ovesen, Yilmaz Guleryuz.

Organizing the event was a great experience, and I'm looking forward to next year. 💚