Tracks at QCon London 2008

The Cloud as the New Middleware Platform

Host: Gregor Hohpe

Designing software continues to be a challenge for today's software developers: how best to translate a set of abstract ideas into functional and usable software.

This track covers a range of developments in software design technique, practice and emphasis, that professional software developers can employ to make the design of their systems more effective.

Agile in Practice

Host: Linda Rising

Scrum was introduced in 1993 and since then more than 15.000 IT professionals have obtained the title Certified Scrum Master after attending a Scrum Alliance Master class. The Scrum framework has been implemented by many both small and large organizations worldwide. XP was introduced by Kent Beck in 1999 in his book "Extreme Programming Explained" and has been adopted by hundreds of thousands of IT professionals worldwide since then. In 2001 the Agile Manifesto was written which embraces principles from both XP, Scrum and Lean.

This track will present the latest development within the agile practices. Leading practitioners will present and explain their latest experiences and pitfalls in implementing agile principles e.g. XP, Scrum and Lean Software Development.

Architectures You've Always Wondered About

Host: James Govenor

Have you ever browsed to a site like eBay or Amazon and wondered, or even fantasized about what software architecture they may have used, and what insights their teams must have after solving such complex and large-scale problems?

This track will give you an exclusive chance to learn directly from some of the most well-known and high-volume web applications in the world. In the previous 2 QCons, this track featured Amazon.com, SecondLife, eBay, Linked-In, Yahoo!, Orbitz.com, Voca, InfoQ.com.

Banking: Complex high volume/low latency architectures

Host: John Davies and Alexis Richardson

In Finance/Banking systems it's not uncommon to see applications delivering over 1 million messages per second. In XTP (extreme transaction processing) applications, high volumes with low latency is fundamental requirement. This track looks at some of the latest innovations as well as time-proven best practices that architects of banking & finance systems need to know. If you've ever thought of moving your servers from one side of the building to the other to shave a few milliseconds off a message exchange, then this track is for you.

Browser & Emerging Rich Client Technologies

Host: Joe Walker

The web has been in a state of transition since its inception. In the beginning there was basic HTML. As more complicated layouts were demanded developers moved to using tables for greater control. Next came CSS to allow the separation of style from structure. Today the shift occurring is not in terms of layout. Instead the driving forces are a better overall user experience, support of rich media such as audio and video, and the ability to run application in both online and offline modes.

The latest dotcom success, YouTube, made rich media an expected part of the internet experience instead of an exception. It along with other sites like it are causing companies to think beyond CSS and HTML. Technologies such as Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Flex/Apollo are providing a foundation for such rich media applications. Another growing trend is the concept of taking a web application offline. Advancements in this area include Apollo's offline capabilities as well as the newly announced Google Gears API. In this track we will dive into these technologies and others that making such a shift possible.

Domain Specific Languages in Practice

Host: Neal Ford

Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) aim at bringing the abstractions in software development closer to the real world of business concerns. Lots of information exists about the plumbing to create DSLS. In this track we present practical applications and tools that are useful today. This track covers a wide range of business areas and technical implementations.

Effective Design

Host: Kevlin Henney

Designing software continues to be a challenge for today's software developers: how to best translate a set of abstract ideas into working and functional software. This track covers a range of developments in software design techniques and practices, that professional software developers can apply to make this transition successful. With focus on modeling core business elements, domain driven design is continuing to gain momentum as an important design strategy. Here we will take a look at what else is happening in software design.

Evolving Java

Host: Brian Goetz

From its initial vision for mobile code and interactive web pages, the Java platform has come a long way in twelve years! Java now runs on platforms ranging from enterprise-grade servers to mobile phones and smart cards.

If you poll developers, every one of them has an idea to make the Java language "better" or to extend the range of environments in which Java can be deployed.
This drive for change is balanced by a large number of customers who like Java just fine as it is. How do you evolve a widely-used, mature language and platform?

Come hear experts from the Java community discuss how the Java language and VM are evolving to meet the community's ever-changing needs.

Programming Languages of Tomorrow

Host: Kresten Krab Thorup

Recent years has - happily - seen an enormous diversification in new programming languages. In this track we continue following these developments looking into languages such as Erlang, F#, and Scala. Why is the scene suddently open to these developments, and how can we best leverage them in our next software project?

SOA, REST and the Web

Host: Stefan Tilkov

The debate about whether or not Web Services are "Web" in name only, and whether or not the architectural style known as "REST" has benefits beyond the browser/Web server communication, started before the term SOA was even coined. More and more business interactions move to the Web; simultaneously, companies become more and more dynamic and loosely coupled. In this track, we will leave the this-vs.-that discussions behind and show how to derive value from the Web's architecture for SOA scenarios.

The Rise of Ruby

Host: James Cox

The growth of acceptance and use of the Ruby language is nothing short of phenomenal. Developers have stopped asking "Why?" and are instead seeking to learn how to best take advantage of what Ruby has to offer. Meanwhile, Ruby on Rails is quickly maturing as it approaches version 2.0 and continues its march to dominance in web application development. Widespread adoption of REST principles are simply more fuel for Rails fire around the world. This track provides in-depth learning about programming innovations in Ruby and Rails, along with practical advice for organizations embracing Ruby as their development platform of choice

XpDay Sampler

Host: Steve Freeman

This track presents representative sessions from the London XpDay series of conferences. It includes leading practitioners associated with the London community, one of the best established in the world, who introduced many of the innovations that are now standard practice. The speakers will talk about topics from their considerable experience in make Agile software development work.

Approaching it's eight year, the London XpDay ("More than a Day, More than XP") is one of the best established Agile software conferences in the world. It's the flagship event of the London XP community, based around the weirdly amorphous eXtreme Tuesday Club, which has been meeting most Tuesdays for nearly ten years and is open to anyone interested in Agile software.

.NET: Client, Server, Cloud

Host: Matt Deacon

We live in interesting times. The traditionally parallel worlds of enterprise software and Internet services are on a collision course.

As the enterprise portfolio increasingly becomes a mix of on-premise software and Internet-based services, architects and developers will have to accommodate both problem spaces in their design decisions.

In this track we will explore these new architectural paradigms and how Microsoft's technology roadmap will take full advantage of the intersection of software plus services.

Solution Track - Friday

Host: TBA

TBA

Solution Track - Performance and Scalability

Host: TBA

What does it take to scale? This panel will bring together leading architects and solution providers in the area of performance, scalability, fault tolerance, & clustering; the panel will explore current & emerging architectures, practices, and solutions for achieving predictable performance & scalability.

Interviews

Host: Ryan Slobojan

At every QCon, InfoQ conducts interviews with several of the speakers and attendees at the conference and posts them online throughout the year.

This year, interviews will be conducted in a public forum, and attendees will have the opportunity to join InfoQ editors in asking questions during the interview.