Report on NetBeans Platform Session in London

SkillsMatter in London hosted a NetBeans Platform session today. The level of interest was very positive. In fact, it was so positive that another session will be held soon, with an aim to provide NetBeans Platform courses via SkillsMatter. Here's a pic of the group at the SkillsMatter session today:

As the guest speaker for the evening, I presented a pretty thorough overview of everything that the NetBeans Platform provides. Soon SkillsMatter will make a video available of the whole session. Aside from my presentation on the NetBeans Platform's purpose, features, and APIs, Tim Dudgeon, product architect and core developer of ChemAxon's Instant JChem, provided a technical overview of Instant JChem from the perspective of the NetBeans APIs used in the context of the application.

Many resources were mentioned for further exploration, including:

• Essential NetBeans Platform RefCard
• NetBeans Platform 6.9 Developer's Guide
• The Definitive Guide to the NetBeans Platform
• NetBeans Platform Homepage
• NetBeans Platform Developer FAQ
• NetBeans APi Javadoc
• NetBeans Platform Screenshots
• NetBeans Platform Tutorials

I had a really great time during the session, really enjoyed myself. I met several people from the NetBeans Platform dev mailing list for the first time, such as David Beer who's a great evangelist for the NetBeans Platform, as well as being really knowledgeable in general. I also met Mark Phipps and Ian Wood from Sucden Financial for the first time. They have an admin console related to stock trading based on the NetBeans Platform. Soon you'll see an article and screenshots from them. Florian Brunner from Zurich is now working in London and he came to the session together with one of his colleagues. Jonathan Gillham sent a message to apologize for not being able to make it, while a look at the screenshots on his organization's site shows the NetBeans Platform in action, in the context of competition timing! Plus, representatives from a few educational institutions attended the session, too. And that's just some of the highlights in terms of the cool people I met at this session.

Certainly the start of a lot of cool NetBeans Platform activities in London! Drop me an e-mail or leave a comment if you'd like to join in next time. :-)