SPA 2007 Conference

Just got back from SPA 2007, held at Cambridge University’s Homerton College.

Held across 4 days (Sun-Wed), it consisted of a mixture of workshops, tutorials, case studies and more open ‘think tank/gold fish bowl’ type sessions.

I presented on ASP.Net / Oracle including lessons learned from a global intranet project I’m currently working on. It triggered some good discussions, both during and after the session, especially regarding the backend platform used (i.e. Oracle rather than SQL Server), state management, along with data and workflow modelling.

Here are some of the other sessions I attended too:

Strategies and Patterns for Systems Continuity
Lessons Learned from Scaling XP
Agile modelling practices on innovative projects
The whys and wherefores of Web 2.0
Effective error handling
Architecting the next generation of .Net applications

Quality of the sessions varied but most were well run and worth attending. I didn’t perhaps ‘learn’ as much as I’d hoped, but two points I did take away were:

1) Web 2.0 is not clearly defined (you don’t say!). I don’t like the term anyway. To me the web is constantly evolving, with new tools appearing and becoming established all the time. To label a ‘moment in web time’ like this does not make sense. There was no clear agreement on details at the conference but most did agree that Web 2.0 will/is having a significant impact on the Internet and business.
2) Agile development (XP, Scrum, Lean) is becoming more widespread and is being used to good effect. I’ve not yet used any of these methods ‘formally’ yet but do already use some of the techniques they encompass. Armed with the knowledge I’ve gained (and some new books!), I’m definitely going to see if I can make use of more Agile techniques in the future.

For me though, the session that I remember most was the plenary by the infamous Professor Tony Hoare… acknowledged widely for his Quicksort algorithm, Hoare Logic, CSP (for formally describing interacting concurrent processes) and his research leading to the Z specification language.

He’s a scientist whom I have looked up to since at University. His plenary was on ‘Assertions and Test driven design’. The talk maybe did not contain as much ‘brilliance’ as his stature and background deserves, but nevertheless none of this matters – just to see him present in person was more than enough for me. A man worthy of his Turing Award (1980) and Knighthood (2000).