Yesterday I attended the Accenture Manila Technology Talk held at Dusit Thani Hotel, Ayala Center, Makati City. The event was about “The Evolution of JavaServer Faces“.

As far as I know I haven’t used JSF but I did work on JSPs and Servlets before, as well as your usual basic Java in school.

I arrived at 1830, because it was rush hour and when I alighted in MRT Ayala Station I had to change my flops to doll shoes. It’s my first time inside Dusit Thani, but I wasn’t awed like I was in Makati Shangri-la since I didn’t get to explore it a bit and the venue was on the ground floor.

I signed up on the attendance sheet, was given my nametag, and proceeded to get some food. There wasn’t much choices and it was all Filipino dishes. I wish I got more potato salad.

Since there was already a lot of people there, I opted to sit in the nearest vacant area that I saw, which was unfortunately at the back.

I didn’t take notice what time the program started but it’s like 10-15 mins after I finished eating. The program started with an icebreaker wherein participants pass around a balloon. To whomever holds the balloon when the music stops get to play. They were asked to inflate the most number of balloons in a minute I think. After than, Mr. Danilo H. shared something about himself and the overview of Java capability in Accenture.

The next speaker is Ms. Sheryl and she talked about the basics of JSF: what is it, its history, the lifecycle, what JSF 2.0 is about.. I didn’t get much pictures since I was busy taking down notes.

The other speaker, Mr. Marvin, walked us through some codes. There had been a couple of dead airs due to technical problems a.k.a. the laptop was hanging.

Discussion ended and there’s Q&A portion. I didn’t really listen to this part because there are stuff that I don’t understand. Afterwards, there’s raffle wherein one guy won a HTC Desire and the other won iPad2 3G+Wifi version.

All in all it was a pleasant experience. I didn’t get to meet anyone, but I got to talk to my seatmates just so I could ask if I can sit in the empty space beside them earlier.

Actually, this is my second time – I’ve attended a Tech Talk way back June 23, 2011 held in Makati Shangri-la. The heavy rain didn’t stop me.

The topic was about “Learn the latest in the web and Windows Phone applications development using .NET” – ASP.NET, MVC and Windows Mango talk.

I enjoyed it more since I really learned a lot of things, even if I am late and I’m totally clueless in the development/coding area (since I never encountered Silverlight from school or work beforehand). Here are some pictures, click to enlarge:

I’m hoping for more upcoming tech talks and events this year. I encourage my fellow IT students and professionals to grab the chance to attend these free seminars/events. There’s always a thing or two to learn and it’s good to socialize and meet with people of the same interest offline. 🙂