As quite a few people will be aware I went to COSCUP 2009 this weekend to present my thoughts on the future of Ajax and ZK 5.

I did not know what to expect from COSCUP as this was the first time I have ever given any sort of presentation in Asia so I must admit I was relatively apprehensive about it before arriving!

Saturday morning

My day actually began at approximately 7am when I awoke to prepare myself and give my presentation a quick rundown before heading out to find the venue. I have to say that organization of the event was superb and everything was planned to a T. I arrived at the venue at approximately 10am completely drenched in sweat, not through nerves but this is Taiwan and the day was HOT!

At this point I was eagerly awaiting the arrival of my colleagues, starting with Jumper, who is one of the technical leads and the javascript expert within the ZK team. Having arrived we both then went to take a look at the talk by Paul Ooi on the Symfony framework and using it to build a PHP web App in 15 minutes. I have to say, his English is great and he provided a very informative and well spoken presentation. It was great for me to observe his style and the style of ericsk who followed with an equally good presentation, this time in Chinese.

Having listened to these presentations I couldn’t believe how quick mine had come about, not only that but in the mean-time of these presentations one of my other colleagues Asuka had arrived and my boss Jim (no pressure!).

Time for the presentation

At approximately 11:40am it was game time, luckily by this time most of the nerves had subsided….however, I generally expected about 80-100 people not over 300! This really was a surprise and just goes to show the level of passion within Taiwan and the Taiwanese community for Open Source Software. I have been to events similar to this in England at my University and there have been less people there than this. From my recollection even the arrival of Richard Stallman in Manchester for a speech at my university only brought in similar number, maybe even less.

Anyway, as I was setting up my computer Bob Chao was introducing me, I had no idea what Bob said at the time but am told it was an excellent and thorough introduction, I am surprised he could remember all my information, even I can’t! SO a BIG thank you to him.

Well, as many people will know and can attest to if you are giving the presentation they will fly by just as mine did. I was extremely impressed by everyone’s level of English ability, I tried to utilize both Chinese and English so was wondering whether everyone understood my English or my Chinese better, now that would be an interesting question .

The afternoon session

So my session was immediately before lunch, which was a nice time to present as me and my colleagues could go for lunch, speaking always makes me hungry! After lunch me and Jumper returned for the afternoon session listening to some really informative talks, we also managed to get both CDs from the Microsoft speaker (who was excellent), one by myself stating I came from the faraway place known as England! I don’t think he was expecting that one…thanks to Jumper for understand most of what he was saying and promptly telling me to put my hand up!

The afternoon session really excited me with 3 foreign speakers, Andrew Purtell from Trend Micro, Hugh Blemings from Canonical and Jim Grisanzio from Sun (in speaking order). Particularly Hugh Blemings and Jim Grisanzio interested me because of large experience in building communities and their community based talks! They did not disappoint and I thoroughly enjoyed these two talks. It was great that I got to meet them both afterwards as they are both really nice and approachable people!

Conclusion

Well to say I was impressed with the event is quite an understatement, it is an absolutely fantastic and I will not hesitate in going back next year. I think credit has to be given to all the organizers and staff of COSCUP for the precise way in which the event was management.

TREMENDOUS!

Download my slides

You can download my slides here!

COSCUP 2009 – The future of Ajax and ZK 5 is a post from: Timothy Clare

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