NLJUG – Nederlandse Java User Group NLJUG – de Nederlandse Java User Group – is opgericht in 2003. De NLJUG verenigt software ontwikkelaars, architecten, ICT managers, studenten, new media developers en haar businesspartners met algemene interesse in alle aspecten van Java Technology.
After the recent NetBeans Day in San Francisco and NetBeans Day in Munich, the first NetBeans Day ever was held in the Netherlands yesterday, hosted in the Oracle office. Coffee, snacks, drinks at the end, all organized by Oracle, really helped to make the event a big success.
What also helped was the really diverse program:
http://netbeans.dzone.com/articles/agenda-netbeans-day-netherlands-1
The keynote was delivered by Adam Bien, world famous Java EE rockstar, who used the very latest NetBeans development build to demonstrate a range of cool things, from Angular, Bower, and Gulp, to executing JavaScript via Nashorn. Lots of great and powerful insights and great quotes from him about why NetBeans is really great, such as that it has everything available out of the box, including Git, for example, and that it's perfect for simply having everything available from the moment you have it installed.
Other sessions were by Timon and Kenrik Veenstra from LimeTri, John Kostaras from the NATO programming center, Joris Snellenburg from the VU University Amsterdam, Martijn Morrien from Netinium, Dalibor Topic (who introduced the OpenJDK and the processes around it) and Ralph Ruijs (who introduced the new tools he's working on in his free time for Python) from Oracle, and Pieter van den Hombergh from Fontys in Venlo. And I also did a presentation, at the start called "This is NetBeans", and at the end, "Extending NetBeans".
I liked the range of attendees at this event—people just getting started with Java (from the LOI MBO application developer course), as well as about 15 students who came with their lecturers from Fontys University of Applied Sciences in Venlo, together with high-end Java and JavaScript developers from Ordina and ING, as well as a range of independent software developers and consultants, and developers from specialized organizations, such as working for the defense force at NATO in Belgium and for the Dutch navy in Den Helder.
Aside from meeting again with many people I have met over the years, such as Timon, Joris, Johan, Remko, Marcel, Steve, Eduard, Ingmar, Pieter, and my colleagues Ralph, Dalibor, Steven, Remco, and Eugene, it was great to meet many people I've been mailing with for years, such as Martijn from Netinium and Roy who has worked on the Wicket plugin for NetBeans, Vincent who I know from Facebook, and Kai (also from Facebook) who traveled all the way from Germany, as well as a whole bunch of people for the first time.
Already we have a date for the next NetBeans Day in the Netherlands: Friday the 13th of November! Mark that date in your calendar. In between, there'll be several smaller events, such as a NetBeans Platform training course at Fontys in Venlo, and a Java coding session with students from the LOI training course in Utrecht. Any other ideas for events in the Netherlands with NetBeans IDE or the NetBeans Platform are more than welcome! (And if you can make it to Munich on March 16, please sign up for NetBeans Day Germany here.)
Many thanks especially to Eugene Bogaart for all the logistical management involved in the event!