In the tight economy, front-end engineers and front-end engineering can play a conspicuous role: good user experience, as the iPhone spectacularly demonstrates, means good business.

At the 7th International AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo which opened Monday in New York City, the speaker lineup is as usual dripping with real-world expertise. The distinguished Speaker Faculty is headlined by Oracle's Ashish Mohindroo, whose Opening Keynote on "Breaking the Collaboration Barrier with Rich Enterprise Applications" set the tone for two intense days of breakout sessions across three parallel tracks.

According to Mohindroo and Oracle, Rich Enterprise Applications (REAs) promise breakthrough capabilities and services for achieving higher levels of personal and team productivity throughout your enterprise.

"Consumer web and mobile technologies are setting high standards for what end users expect from enterprise applications, increasing the gap between complexity of technology and the time in which IT has to deliver," he said.  Mohindroo continued:

"These trends are redefining the role of the enterprise developer and increasing the pressure to provide enterprise application users with next-generation collaboration tools, while ensuring integration of those capabilities into existing enterprise infrastructure."

His keynote outlined among other things Oracle's vision on the rapid creation of collaboration tools, of mashing up existing applications, injecting Portal capabilities into plain web apps, and building scalable Enterprise 2.0-style applications that render rich user experiences using AJAX, Java Server Faces, and Flash.

The Speaker Faculty today and tomorrow in New York includes practitioners and executives from a wide range of industry players:

• Mehmet Akin - UI Lead Developer, IBM
• Akbar Ali Ansari - Software Engineer, Oracle
• Matias Bagini - CEO, JRapid Corp
• Keith Bergelt – CEO, Open Invention Network
• Eric J. Bruno - Systems Engineer, Sun Microsystems
• Robert Boedigheimer - Web Application Architect, Schwans Shared Services
• Sujoe Bose - Research Scientist, DSine Dynamics
• Max Carlson - Lead Runtime Architect, OpenLaszlo
• Robbie Cheng - Senior Engineer, Potix Corp
• Jim Connors - Systems Engineer, Sun Microsystems
• Jose de Castro - Lead Architect, Voxeo Corporation
• Yakov Fain - Managing Director, Farata Systems
• Michael Girouard - Sr. Developer, Magnani Carusso Dutton
• Anil Gurnani - VP & Technical Project Manager, J P Morgan Chase
• Patrick Hertzog - Co-Founder& User Experience Officer, NEXThink
• Charles Jolley - Founder, SproutCore Project
• Darrel Meyer - Senior Software Architect, Ext JS
• Joe Preston - Managing Partner & UX Architect, Momentum Design Lab
• Habeeb Rushdan - Technical Trainer/Consultant, LowerHead Consulting
• Shashank Tiwari - Chief Technologist, Saven Technologies
• Shaun Walker - Creator & Maintainer, DotNetNuke
• Rich Waters - Senior Software Architect, ExtJS
• Matthias Wessendorf - Senior Software Developer, Oracle
• Elaine Wherry - Co-Founder & VP of Engineering, Meebo
• Kevin Whinnery - Systems Engineer, Appcelerator
• Regev Yativ - President & CEO, Magic Software
  
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The overall Conference theme is "Driving Profitability Through the User Experience" and the event is co-located with the 15th International SOA World Conference & Expo and with iPhone Developer Summit 2009 East.

Adobe AIR - Flex and Java expert Yakov Fain will be giving a session in NYC showing how to architect an occasionally connected AIR/Java application based on the open source BlazeDS. The session, "Occasionally-Connected Applications with Adobe AIR and BlazeDS," is sure to attract a good crowd.

AJAX Push - see Comet

BlazeDS - see Adobe AIR

Browser Issues - In a session called "Solving Cross-Domain Issues When Building Mashups," IBM Software Developer Mehmet Akin will be giving delegates in New York an overview of possible techniques to overcome the the cross-domain issue caused by the browser's Same Origin Policy.

Cloud Computing - The CEO of Magic Software, Regev Yativ, will be asking "Are Rich Internet Applications Ready for the Cloud?" in a session discussing how companies can develop and deploy rich Internet business applications on premise or on the cloud, enhancing the user experience like never before, Yativ aims to show that the answer is 'Yes!'

Comet - "Where Are We Now? Where Are We Headed?" is the title of a session given by long-time AJAXWorld speaker Matthias Wessendorf. He will introduce the most common Comet Patterns and give an overview of the most relevant Comet solutions in the market, before ending the session with a preview of upcoming specifications like Java Servlet 3.0 and HTML5 - aimed at helping developers to create a much more interactive Web.

Designing Web Apps - see Web App Design

Developer Productivity - Building enterprise software during the 90s was surprisingly faster than doing it today using the HTML/AJAX way. As a result, many platforms are emerging to bring the old 4GL/RAD productivity back again into the AJAX world. Matias Bagini, CEO of JRapid Corp and himself an experienced software engineer with technical and entrepreneurial background, will be exploring this topic in June in a session called "Bringing Productivity Back to Developers in the Age of AJAX."

EC2 & AJAX - Anil Gurnani,Technical Project Manager at J P Morgan Chase, will be giving a case study session in New York describing how to use the amazing power of Amazon EC2 services and AJAX client applications to develop enterprise class applications that can scale to support hundreds of thousands of users.

Enterprise RIA - If applied incorrectly, an enterprise RIA can degrade server performance and hamper the scalability of the application as a whole. In a session titled "RIA-lizing Enterprise Applications", Dr Sujoe Bose will explore an effective, repeatable, objective and rigorous method to "RIA-lize" enterprise applications, one that not only addresses usability but also scalability and performance – important characteristics of killer-apps. "The intent is to provide a migration path to RIAs that is less risky and more rewarding," says Bose.

Flex - "Adobe Flex and the Microsoft.NET Framework - Strange But Amazing Bedfellows" is the title of a fast-paced session being given in New York by Habeeb Rushdan, a Senior Software Engineer and Technical Trainer. Delegates will receive a brief introduction into both of these exciting programming worlds and then Rushdan will describe how to leverage both of them to create a data-driven, visually stunning front end in Flex and an enterprise-ready SOA backend in .NET.

Harpsichord - see Web App Design

HTML5 - see Comet

IE8 - see Internet Explorer 8

Information Dashboards - The User Experience Officer and co-founder of NEXThink, Patrick Hertzog, will present a session offering practical guidelines for designing effective dashboards and avoiding common pitfalls. "Every manager, from the sales manager to the CEO, wants a dashboard displaying her own KPIs," notes Hertzog. His session in NYC is called: "Information Dashboards: Design & Implementation"

Internet Explorer 8 - IE8 will ship in a new "standards" mode by default, which has the potential to impact many sites that have been crafted around various "features" in past versions. In a must-attend session, "Internet Explorer 8 and its Impact on Your Web Sites," Robert Boedigheimer, principal of Robert Boedigheimer Consulting, will discuss which current practices will need to change and how this will affect your development techniques and your existing sites. "Don't be surprised the day IE 8 ships and your sites break," says Boedigheimer. "Be prepared!"

JavaFX - What is JavaFX...and why should you care? - That is precisely the questions being addressed in NYC by Sun's Eric Bruno and Jim Connors, both systems engineers and both highly qualified to speak about every aspect of JavaFX from the language (JavaFX Script), to the platforms (JavaFX, JavaFX Mobile, and JavaFX TV), development tools, and Java integration.

JavaScript - "Object Oriented JavaScript" is the title of the New York session being given by Mike Girouard, a senior front-end web developer at the creative agency Magnani Caruso Dutton. The session will explore the JavaScript programming language and will demonstrate several practical design patterns delegates can use in their JavaScript/AJAX application today.

JavaScript 2 - Max Carlson from OpenLaszlo.org is giving a session showing how OpenLaszlo 4.3 includes a new JavaScript 2-based compiler that translates JS2 syntax to a variety of formats, including JS 1.5, Actionscript 1 & 2 and Actionscript 3. It's called "Using JavaScript 2 Today with OpenLaszlo."

Java Servlet 3.0 - see Comet

Object-Oriented JavaScript - see JavaScript

Rich Clients - AJAX is not the only player in the space of UI development. a second renaissance regarding Rich Client technologies is taking place, with Rich Client frameworks such as Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Flex. In a session called "Thin Client or Rich Client?" UI Architect Florian Mueller will be focusing on several aspects regarding technology choice and will give delegates in New York guidelines for deciding when to follow the Rich Client path in the future and when to go with a Thin Client instead.

Ruby on Rails - In a session called "Appcelerator RIA on Rails" delegates will have a chance to learn how to leverage existing JSON services implemented in Ruby on Rails controllers to provide the server back end for a rich Internet application using the Appcelerator RIA framework.

Silverlight - see Rich Clients

Thin Client vs Rich Client - see Rich Clients

Web App Design - In a sure-to-be-jam-packed New York session intriguingly called "What Web App Design Can Learn From the Harpsichord," Meebo.com co-founder and VP of Engineering Elaine Wherry will walk through recent web application design and analyze the functionality of these elements. "As designers explore how far they can go, there comes a breaking point where it hurts the end product," says Wherry. "Lesson learned is that just because you can, doesn't mean you should."