Unconference 2018

//La versión española del artículo se puede encontrar aquí:  Unconference 2018.

Unconference took place on November 6, in Pakhuis de Zwijger, previously at Liferay DevCon in Amsterdam. I've read about this sessions, but I've never taken part in one. Spoiler, I loved it

If you have ever been taking part of one, you'll know Unconference agenda doesn't exist before it starts. If you haven't, I'm going to talk about Liferay Unconference 2018 to explain how it was.

First of all, Olaf talked about different spaces (talks zones, lunch zone, toilets, etc.), lunchtime, organization, and, very important, about 4 principles an 1 law.

4 principles:

  • Whoever comes is the right people (every participant wants to be there)
  • Whatever happens is the only thing that could have (the important thing is what it's happening in that place and in that moment )
  • Whenever it starts is the right time (you don't have to wait for anything to start the session)
  • When it’s (not) ever it’s (not) over (you make the most of the session)

1 law:

  • Law of Two Feet: If at any time you are in a situation where you are neither learning nor contributing, then you can use your two feet to go to a more productive place. This law is important to understand that every participant is present voluntarily.

I would like to remember a sentence that is important to understand Unconference mindset "If nobody attends your session, you have two options. In one hand, you can look for another interesting session,  in the other hand, you can work in your topic because when you propose a session, you are booking one hour to work in that topic".

At that moment we started to brainstorm and build out the day's agenda. We then write down topics on cards and choose the track.

Finally, these session topics are coordinated into available time slots and organized to avoid topic repetition and allow attendees to join the sessions they believe are right for them. It's important to know, only who has proposed the sessions, can change the card to another slot. So, if you want to change it (because there is another session at the same time), you must talk to her/him.

 

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

A Staging 2.0 - change list Liferay in action at the university

 

Rest/HATEOAS vs.GraphQL SennaJS/Module loader with other JS libs Liferay Analytics What extension point are you missing?
B APIO? Liferay performance with more than 1 million users   Personalization - use cases & more DDM, Forms & Workflow Search optimisation: boosting & filtering DXP Cloud
C       How do you monitor your Liferay application & plugins Using multitenancy (more instances in one installtion) - a good idea? mongoDB & Liferay Audience Targeting to guest user: how to do it?
D "Internal classes" - Why are some classes in the "internal" package not exported? How to customize? Container + Liferay: How to deploy or upgrade?   Liferay intelliJ Plugin - Language Server Protocol Administration experiences   GDPR
E Migration experiences: LR 6.2 --> 7.0 Liferay as a headless CMS - best practices   Liferay + TensorFlow Data integration, ETL/ESB | Experiences & methods integrating external systems Mobile with Liferay Workspace: tips & tricks | How you use/extend workspace? Use plugins?
F Liferay Commerce Config & content orchestration - site initializers   Your experience with Liferay + SSO   DXP vs. CE  
G React?     Media/Video - server user upload/integration Documentation: What is missing? Making it easier for business users to build sites (modern site building) Liferay for frontend developers

H

             

I share some notes of the sessions:

  • Migration experiences : LR 6.2 --> 7.0           
    • If you want to upgrade Liferay version and to migrate to open source base data, it's better to migrate base data version first.
  • Config & content orchestration - site initializers            
    • There are some implementations, one is created by Commerce team.
    • Liferay team is analyzing to include it to new versions.
  • Liferay + TensorFlow
    • It is a new functionality in 7.2. Now it's available in github.
    • This functionality is implemented for images but is available to assets.  
  • How do you monitor your Liferay application & plugins
    • Use jvm to check threads           
    • Java thread dump analyzer -> http://fastthread.io
  • Documentation: What is missing?
    • Slack vs forum – don't lose information 
  • DXP vs. CE   
    • We talked about the two versions (CE and DXP) and possibility we pay licenses for support and code of both versions are the same
  • Workspace: tips & tricks | How you use/extend workspace? Use plugins?          
    • In the upgrade process to 7 version, if you can't migrate all modules, they recommend migrating services.
    • compile only - instruction call to proof

I think Unconference is very useful for everyone. On one hand, Liferay staff can check their functionalities and get feedback, and on the other hand, we can talk about topics important to us with experts.

To finish Unconference, we met in the plenary room and summarized the event.

Some points are very interesting of unconference are:

  • Philosophy/Mentality 
  • Attitude (everyone wants to share, teach and learn)
  • You can propose topics easily
  • You have a lot of options to learn (too many experts). 

As I said at the beginning, Unconference has been a wonderful experience and I would like to come back again.

Blogs

Thank you for your report - The Unconference is always eye-opening to me, and I'm repeatedly amazed by the content and collaboration that's happening there.