How we won a drone at the OOP conference in Munich

Last week we visited the OOP conference in Munich. Since for two of us it has been the first time attending a conference, this was quite a new experience. The venue was the International Congress Center in Munich where the OOP took place for the 28th time. Concerning the topics, it focused mainly on Software Architecture. It offered a great mixture of topics which we can adopt for products ePages Base and ePages Now. Starting with an extensive workshop about microservices, we also joined sessions about legacy code, DevOps, or scalability. We even had the opportunity to get to know about the latest developments in fancy topics such as artificial neuronal networks, or quantum computing. Despite this, we could enjoy the atmosphere in Munich in a typical Bavarian hotel.

To give you some more insights on what we learned from this conference, here’s a summary of our favorite talks:

“Microservices – Idee, Architektur, Umsetzung und Betrieb am Beispiel”

This was an extensive workshop about microservices and one of our main points of interest. The speaker Eberhard Wolff gave us a deep overview about the concept of Domain-driven Design (DDD) that leads to the idea of microservices. Finally he gave an example how to implement these using a common technology stack such as Docker, Kubernetes, Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger, Elastic, and Kibana.

“Mit Werkzeugen von morgen Software von gestern systematisch verbessern”

This talk tackled the topic how you can efficiently deal with legacy software using a modern tool set. The speaker gave insights what helped him to understand and improve legacy code, and shared interesting ideas which tools to use when it comes to working with such code.

“Sollbruchstellen in Microservices”

Another excellent talk about microservices. This time with focus on HOW to divide your software into microservices. For example, dividing software into microservices means no more transactions, since every mircoservice must have its own database schema (or even separate database). But consistency can still be achieved, even though it almost always means the level of consistency will get worse. This talk showed us how to deal with it.

“Schnelligkeit und Ausdauer in Software-Projekten”

This talk was about productivity in the software development. The speaker of this talk has analyzed what affects the performance of a developer, and what the developer as well as the company can do to improve productivity. For example the team of the speaker has convinced the CTO of the company that every sprint they will, without any exception, take 15% of the time to deal with the technical dept. He said it was one of the best decisions.

Open Bionics: Turning children with limb differences into bionic superheroes

This fascinating keynote was about a company that produces cool bionic prostheses for kids and adults, that look like parts from superheroes. The co-founder presented how, by using modern technologies such as 3D printing, it has been possible to produce more attractive protheses by reducing the costs for them. Visit Open Bionics if you’d like to have a deeper look.

“KI @ Cloud : Bildverabeitung mit neuronalen Netzen”

Here we learned what can be possible with artificial neuronal networks using the example of a transport check in the production of Volkswagen. Furthermore, they showed how they deployed such a project using a private cloud.

Summary

We really liked the whole atmosphere of this conference, the big variety of topics, the talks to choose from as well as the location. On top of this, Oleksandr returned with a drone from Munich he had won at one of the booths, where you could win lots of giveaways. With a bit of luck he could manage to throw a ping pong ball into a little pot, and was rewarded with his own drone.

About the authors

Friedrich Gehring is a Software Engineer who studied Physics. When he is not sitting in front of a computer, he loves to play the cello.
Michael Höhn is an experienced Software Engineer with a degree in Technical Informatics. His focus is on backend implementations for our products Base and Now.
Oleksandr Goranskyy is a Junior Software Engineer who fixes bugs for a living.