Abhishek Mahanty's Weblog

Sun Tech Days 2008 @ Hyderabad

Last week Hyderabad hosted the popular developer conference - Sun Tech Days for the second consecutive year. It was a great 3-day event filled with learning (lots of technical sessions/labs) and entertainment (Euphoria concert, Talent show, Fashion show etc).

I really enjoyed the Day-2 keynote by David Axmark (MySQL co-founder). He took us through the journey of MySQL - The world's most popular open source database and shed some light on the road ahead. His slide on Sun-MySQL partnership drew huge applause from a packed hall of developers.

As far as technical sessions go, the attendees had lot of options this year. There were 3 tracks packed with various sessions and labs to choose from. I had a pretty busy time taking the following sessions:

• Ajax and Web 2.0 related frameworks & toolkits
• Java Troubleshooting Tips
• Java ME: Streaming Video from Server to Device (with Chuk Munn Lee and Terrence Barr)

The attendees had a great time attending different sessions throughtout the day and had more reasons to cheer for in the evenings. If it was the popular band "Euphoria" rocking on Day 1, it was the fashion show that kept everyone in good spirits on Day 2 . All in all a great event as always.

Find more details on Arun's blog (Day 1 and Day 2).. he's got some lovely photos and videos from the event.

Euphoria Performing - Video 1

Euphoria Performing - Video 2

Posted at 12:00AM Mar 03, 2008 by Abhishek Mahanty in Sun  |  Comments[0]

Sun Technology Summit 2007 @ Bangalore

I was in Bangalore last friday for Sun Technology Summit that was attended by 800+ developers. The main attraction of the event was definitely Scott McNealy - Sun Co-Founder & Chairman. The event started at the scheduled time with Scott's keynote session. He touched upon a lot of things viz. Software, Hardware, Services, Open Source, Education etc. The audience really enjoyed his session and later mobbed him for autograph .

His keynote was followed by my session on Java SE: Today and Tomorrow where I took the attendees through the Java timeline and the future roadmap. Some of the things I covered are:

• Java - Overview, Timeline
• New Language Features of Java SE 5, 6 and 7.
• Demos - Java Desktop Integration, Java SE Web Services, Scripting in Java and JConsole.

There were quite a few questions from the audience regarding the new features and they seem to have enjoyed the demos. I had interactions with lot of people throughout the day - Students, Architects, Academia etc.

Posted at 12:53PM May 21, 2007 by Abhishek Mahanty in Sun  |  Comments[1]

Sun Tech Days @ Delhi

Last week we had Sun Tech Days at Hyderabad with parallel events in Delhi, Mumbai and Pune. It was an amazing event.. we reached out to 10000+ developers across these cities. The sessions were very informative and we got some great feedback from the attendees.

I had a session in Delhi on Java Persistence APIs: Simplifying Persistence. I had opted for this topic because lot of developers are using persistence frameworks viz. Hibernate, JDO etc. in projects and I wanted to share my views on Java Persistence API vis-a-vis these frameworks.

I developed a small web application that uses Java Persistence API using NetBeans. The attendees loved the Persistence support provided in NetBeans and were very eager to try it out themselves.

There were quite a few questions and I had a nice discussion with few attendees after the session.

Later in the evening I left for Hyderabad, to join my team for the Hands-on-Labs that were scheduled for the next day. The venue was really nice and was packed with lot of excited students. The lab sessions required attendees to carry laptop and we were surprised to see the number of students who turned up. We had to add extra chairs . A laptop seems to be a must-have for students these days.

I had a good time and look forward to Sun Tech Days 2008!

Posted at 12:00AM Feb 27, 2007 by Abhishek Mahanty in Sun  | 

Sun @ NIT Durgapur TechFest

Sun was invited to participate in NIT Durgapur's techfest - Mukti. It's primarily driven by the university's Linux User Group - an active bunch of students that I later got to meet and interact with.

I and Moinak had a session each on Java and Solaris respectively. More than the sessions, I think we enjoyed the interaction with the students. We met some really bright students - technically brilliant and very creative. Unfortunately, most of them don't want a career in the technology industry and are already preparing for getting into Business schools - a common situation at Technical institutes in India these days.

I don't know how good they'll be in the business world but they could really carve a niche for themselves in the engineering world.

Posted at 12:00AM Feb 19, 2007 by Abhishek Mahanty in Sun  |  Comments[1]

Tech Seminar @ IIT Roorkee

Yesterday, we had a seminar on Sun Technologies at IIT Roorkee. I spoke along the lines of my session at IIT Bombay last week. I was accompanied by Aakash who spoke on Solaris and its features.

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Posted at 12:00AM Feb 01, 2007 by Abhishek Mahanty in Sun  | 

Sun @ TechFest 2007, IIT Bombay

Techfest 2007 - IIT Bombay's Annual International Science and Technology festival began yesterday (Jan 26th) with much fanfare. The beautiful campus near the Powai lake was jostling with Students and Industry folks alike. Sun is one of the key sponsors of the festival and has a lot of presence during the entire three-day event - Technical sessions (interestingly titled Sun Lectures by the TechFest folks ), Quizzes etc.

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Posted at 05:45AM Jan 27, 2007 by Abhishek Mahanty in Sun  |  Comments[0]

NIIT Java Seminar @ Pune, Mumbai and Hyderabad

NIIT conducted Java Seminars in Pune, Mumbai and Hyderabad and had invited me to deliver a talk on Java.

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Posted at 02:30PM Jan 11, 2007 by Abhishek Mahanty in Sun  |  Comments[1]

Cool Sun Ads

Just found some nice Sun advertisements on YouTube... really funny!

The featured guy is simply hilarious
My personal favourite is the one with the "self-cooling datacenter"

Check it out yourself..

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Posted at 11:35PM Oct 26, 2006 by Abhishek Mahanty in Sun  |  Comments[0]

Sun University Days @ Delhi College of Engineering

Sun University Days was held at Delhi College of Engineering yesterday. It was an exciting event with 250+ attendees, mostly students. This was my second visit to DCE which is situated at the outskirts of Delhi. I had two sessions. I spoke on - "Technology Innovations in Java" and "Java EE 5 - Simplifying Application Development".

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Posted at 11:20PM Oct 11, 2006 by Abhishek Mahanty in Sun  |  Comments[0]

Sun University Days @ BMSCE, Bangalore

I just came back from Sun University Days held at BMS College of Engineering (BMSCE), Bangalore and let me just say it rocked! It was a two-day event and was attended by 150+ members (Students/Academia).

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Posted at 08:10PM Sep 28, 2006 by Abhishek Mahanty in Sun  |  Comments[1]

Asterix and Obelix find friends @ Sun

Asterix and Obelix from that famous village in Gaul have found some new friends at Sun.

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Posted at 02:07AM Sep 22, 2006 by Abhishek Mahanty in Sun  |  Comments[0]

IEEE Gujarat J2EE Workshop

IEEE (Gujarat Chapter) had organised a two-day workshop on J2EE (or Java EE to be more correct) and had invited me to talk about the latest features of Java EE 5. So I decided to talk on EJB 3.0 , Java Persistence API and JSF.

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Posted at 12:18PM Sep 19, 2006 by Abhishek Mahanty in Sun  |  Comments[0]

Sun Microsystems-NIIT Partnership

Sun Microsystems has tied up with NIIT (India's leading IT education & training company) for providing Java and Solaris courses that would help students prepare for Sun Certifications. [Read More]

Posted at 03:09PM Aug 24, 2006 by Abhishek Mahanty in Sun  |  Comments[5]

Sun University Days @ IIT, Roorkee

I was at IIT Roorkee last week participating in the recently held Sun University Days. It was great to be back among the students... couldn't help getting all nostalgic

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Posted at 09:10AM Apr 27, 2006 by Abhishek Mahanty in Sun  |  Comments[0]