The following talk was by Emmanuel Levi-Valensi. The talk focused on the fact that businesses must :

*) know their market;
*) satisfy their clients;
*) always learn (most importantly from its mistakes);
*) check their hypothesis on the terrain;
*) iterate in short cycles to get feedback as soon as possible;
*) come out quickly with a "Minimal Viable Product" to "build-measure-learn".

I was happy to follow this first great talk by Axel Rauschmayer. It was well explained and corresponded to the tech-level I hoped for (reminding the basics, presenting the good patterns to use, and the trouble-shooting that can be met). The main idea that I noted is that Javascript has a big potential to be seen everywhere (client, server, desktop, mobile, database, ...), have a good understanding of its workings is capital nowadays (both for its potentials and limits).

The opening keynotes were presented by two personnes.

Firstly, Martin Görner (Googler) invited us to get the Chrome for Android (ICS). The Javascript motor was rewritten, is faster, and incorporates gestures (you can, among other things, manage your tabs like a stack of cards!). They optimised Canvas, 3D, CSS, ... On the other hand, WebGL, WabAudioGL API, and Flex don't work yet. But, remotedebugging works !!11!1!

Then, Claire Blondel, who is a quality engineer, took the mike. Her talk puzzled quite a lot of people but echoed so much of my childhood. Through examples of her travels and her family, she explained how, in France, making mistakes is "inexcusable". This, according to her, can bring low self-esteem, lack of autonomy to deal with mistakes, and lack of perseverence to deal with them.

I'll be all day today at the Mix-IT convention following several tech-talks .

The Lyon Geek Show will be held from May 18th to 20th this year.



More info here.

Saturday and Sunday were much more busy. With the fine weather we had a picnic in the nearby parc. I got Bronze in the Confirmed category of the Fantask Open painting contest.

Here are a few pics of the convention (the empty ones were taken Friday night) :

http://www.cedric.maria-sube.com/album/OctoGones/2011/

Just a quick word to pass on the news that the city of Lyon is hosting a European comic book convention this weekend :



More on it here.

Back from GD FR. My general impression was that although there were some pretty excellent entries (maybe better than last year), the number of participants was a lot lower. Squads and LotR were almost deserted. Recession, procastination, less interest in miniatures ... ? Time will only tell.

I need to do some touch up work on my entry before showing pics of it.

But in the mean time, here's my first miniature oriented article :

Things to have in mind for miniature contests

The gaming convention "Place aux Jeux" will be held in Grenoble from April 11th to April 17th :

Place aux Jeux

The event section now has photo albums of different conventions I assisted recently (the Lugdunum Open being the latest one).