SOA Symposium, Amsterdam I was in Amsterdam
earlier
this week (pictured at the Van Gogh Museum to the left) to
give two talks at the 1st International SOA
Symposium.
I
was invited by the organizers to give a talk on SOA and Java EE (on
account of the book that I have co-authored on this topic). I responded
that I would really like to talk about SOA, Web 2.0 and building Social
Applications. They asked me to give both talks.
The conference
itself was well organized. It was held at the Amsterdam Arena (home to
Amsterdam's AJAX football team). They had secured the whole stadium
(pictured to the right) for the event over the two days. The stadium
can
seat 75,000 people. There were 500 people at the event. So, we occupied
a part one section of the stadium! Nevertheless, the audience that
attended were well informed and asked deep, probing questions.
A few things about the city of Amsterdam struck me:
The beauty of the city - with its canals and ancient
architecture
The availability of public transport to travel around
comfortably and easily (I never had to use a taxi!)
The fact that a lot of people travel by bicycle. There are
separate bike lanes, auto lanes and tram lanes everywhere I looked!
The prevalence of smoking (I guess I am just not used to
seeing so many people smoking in public!)
Admiration
for people. They don't have much by way of natural resources - so their
entire economy is based on their resourcefulness, ingenuity and
engineering skills. Netherlands is home to two of the top 10 companies
in the world - Shell and ING
Friday Oct 10, 2008
to 