I recently had the privilege and pleasure of traveling throughout the ASEAN region speaking at Oracle Technical Network "Developer Days" events. The five cities in the tour were Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Singapore, and Bangkok. My tour guide and traveling buddy was Naveen Asrani (see picture on the right), a Director of Product Management at Oracle who lives next door to the region in Bangalore.
One of the things that struck me on the tour was how warm and engaging people (including the Java developers) are in the ASEAN region. The attendees in each location had high levels of professionalism and lots of great questions. It was also great to meet developers that I had previously only communicated with electronically. One such developer was Mark Anro Silva in Manila, pictured in the top slide in the deck below. Mark is a JavaFX pioneer from the early days of JavaFX Script, and shares his work via his blog.
I found it amusing, by the way, that Lady Gaga was on tour in the same region. After checking into the Makati Shangri-La hotel in Manila, I turned on the TV and found that Gaga had checked in that morning. I had no idea that she was into Java/JavaFX! :-)
Take a look at the great audiences and a couple of the sights that I had the privilege of seeing, in the slide deck below:
I hope to return to the ASEAN region soon!
Jim Weaver
james.weaver@oracle.com
