Springone 2019

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The SpringOne conference journey started on Saturday morning really early (3:30 AM) with a ✈️ to Atlanta. Delta had the honor, if we must believe them, to fly us. In Atlanta we had a long layover, but were very fast through customs 🛃 to our surprise.

I did get some sleep but not enough. Watched “Tolkien” and liked it and “Aladdin” and was disappointing. The original cartoon one with Robin Williams was brilliant but Will Smith meh.

18 hours sitting in a plane is quite a long sit if I do say so myself. Not my favorite part. My size makes these trips always a challenge, but worth it.

The hotel 🏨 is great and very new I think.

And my first BBQ spareribs was amazing.

Sunday

I slept the sleep of the dead 💀. Must have been tired 😴, I don’t know why?!

Had a nice breakfast 🥞 of pancakes with fruit after which we tried out the scooters 🛴 for the first time. Fun fun.

We drove all over the city and have seen much of it now. As it is my first time in Austin that alone was great fun. Also hot 🥵! At home it is in the low 50s (10•C), but here in the high 90s (37•C). Quite a big change IMHO.

We went to Congress Ave where many market like stands were and good food and also went to the Texas Historical Museum near the University. We were lucky 🍀 as the museum was free and also very nice.

All was more fun because of the scooters 🛴. Somehow Austin does not give me the vibe of being very touristy. I don’t know why. It is also “closed” on Sunday, which I did not expect. I find myself falling for the same kind of prejudices about Americans as I always hear Americans have of the Dutch or Europeans. I was expecting lots of very obese people and the like, but none of that came true. Austin gives an easy going vibe with lots of very nice, young and helpful people. I did not feel unsafe at any time, which I did at times in e.g. San Francisco. I keep expecting the traffic to be fierce and busy, but nope. So Austin gives a feeling of village living with all the amenities of a city. Very pleasantly surprised and I apologize for having all these prejudices. I will try to be more open minded in the future.

SpringOne 2019

Monday

Monday is the workshop and Hands-on Labs and had not been able to register for any of them. I tried for weeks, but no dice. I was actually quite bummed about it. How can you pay 💰 so much money for a conference and then NOT be able to follow a workshop? Ridiculous IMHO.
I did want to follow one though so I just went and stood stand-by for a “Knative” Hands-on Lab. It proved to be no problem as only about 7 registered attendees showed up and the rest was there just like me on standby. That also seems very wrong somehow, but I did get to follow a very nice workshop by James Ward and Ray Tsang. 👍👍

The air conditioning was doing a verrrry good job, brrrr. It was freezing inside.

I did not get any breakfast, so for lunch I went all out with a very good burger with french fries.

For the afternoon Philippe and I decided to do the same and that brought us to a “Concourse” workshop. They made quite a few assumptions, to my disappointment, like that we already knew what “Concourse” was. They lost me in the first hour so I left. Too bad, but not really their fault.

So we went to the Community Hub after dropping our bags at the hotel.

We did the rounds and spoke to a few companies. The conference does not seem all that busy. It is the first time I attend SpringOne and I am used to conferences like Devoxx and CodeOne. SpringOne is much quieter.

Later in the evening the community hub had food and lighting talks. The lightning talks were amazing and sometimes funny!

Tuesday

Ok I was wrong. Today is the first day of the classical conference and yes it is busy. Main stage is filling up and it is quite huge.

The keynote was pretty good for a keynote 😜.

Now to…

I had some belly ache 🤒 at lunchtime so decided to get some exercise. So I decided to go stand on a scooter 🛴 again 🤣. I drove around the city for an hour and had a good time looking around and listening to my audiobook.

Later in the afternoon I went back to the sessions, refreshed. I had a trip down memory lane listening to Rod Johnson talking about 18 years of spring. Which was fun.

At night there were parties 🎊. We went to the EMEA Party and the MongoDB party. No pictures of the latter as we had to put our phones into a lockable case for privacy reasons. So what happens at…😄

Wednesday

It is starting at the main stage again with many great speakers.

I learned Klingon in Kotlin by Mark Heckler and learned that you can write your own Spring initializrs by Stéphane Nicolle.

After the last talk about Reactive architectures, we had some diner at the community hub and went for a walk to the bat 🦇 bridge. We waited for almost two and a half hours with many other people for the famous bat flight, but the bats were lazy tonight and there was a lot of wind. There was one nice man with a thermal lens so we did see them in the cracks of the bridge. All 1.5 million of them, but we did not see them in flight with our bare eyes. We may try again tomorrow.

Thursday

Last day of the conference. Breakfast was nice and I even tried to keep it kinda healthy.

I do not post much about the talks as I expect them to be posted on YouTube soon. Most were quite good though.

In the afternoon when SpringOne was finished Philippe and I went for a long walk. We followed the Colorado river for a long time and then went back on the other side. Very warm and very nice.

We also had some pool time. 🌅

And a nice Banger…

After diner we went back to the bat 🦇 bridge, but again… no dice.

Friday

We rented a nice car 🚙 for the day to see something of Texas in one day.
The weather had changed drastically from high 90s (35•C) to 50 (10•C). I saw it in the weather app but didn’t believe it. I was wrong, it was cold! And I was not dressed for it! Neither was Philippe. we went straight from the hotel in the car so we noticed this only at our first stop in San Antonio. It was cold!

But we didn’t forget Alamo! Freezing 🥶 we visited it and saw a nice exhibit about its history.

Driving on with fresh coffee and the heater on we went to Bandera the cowboy Capitol of Texas, where Philippe bought a Cowboy hat 🤠. Again some warming coffee ☕️

In Fredericksburg where I saw Iron Man 😜.

We saw quite some German texts in Fredericksburg and a lot of touristy shops with a lot of “made in china”.

We went to Dripping Springs for which we needed reservations. Because of the weather many people had not shown up. We were very lucky because we were there at end of day and almost nobody was there anymore. Beautiful place!

We asked a very nice lady working for the nature reserve what would be a good place to eat and she advised us to go to Salt Lick BBQ. We did and wow 🤩 just wow. I just have to use a power word here. It was the best fucking meal I’ve had in Texas!

Bison Ribs. Just amazing! If you get the chance… go there!

Words are just not enough. It was just that good!

Another 30 minute drive and we were back at the hotel after filling up the car for just $25,- which is a ridiculously low price for Dutch standards.

So now our trip is almost over. Tomorrow we will fly back home.

It has been a great experience and Texas has not disappointed at all.

Cheerz,

Ivo.