Scala Akka Workshop Reloaded - Actor Cluster

Because there was so much interest and positive feedback last time (http://www.meetup.com/scala-vienna/events/150475152/), it's time for a second Akka Workshop - complete with live feedback, connected actors and awesomeness.

UPDATE: Please prepare for the workshop (see TODOs below)

UPDATE: Free drinks thanks to our sponsor xTradesoft. More details see below.

UPDATE: At the end we'll do a raffle for a ticket to the CRAFT conference (https://groups.google.com/d/msg/scala-vienna/upDHDdLovLU/J0RR0Yoao90J).

So what's the idea?
This time we want to learn about Akka Clusters and Scaling Out. Everyone will implement Actors that together will form a connected Akka Cluster. Using the combined power of all our machines, we will try to come up with a solution for a tricky problem.

• Step 1: Introduction about Akka and Akka Clusters. (20 min)

• Step 2: Getting everyone connected to the cluster, and handling basic messaging between Actors. (30 min)

• Step 3: With a few simple steps which Wolfgang and I will carefully explain, the cluster as a whole will implement a distributed evolutionary algorithm. This algorithm will then solve a tricky robot decision making problem.

• Step 4 (profit): Watch as the robot "evolves", and makes better and better decisions. We will visualize the robots decisions by taking solutions from the cluster in real-time.

What's an Evolutionary Algorithm?
It's not important to know about them, but Wolfgang and I will explain the basics in the workshop. Evolutionary algorithms are a good use case for Akka Clusters and showing fault tolerance.

Who can participate?

We're putting in effort to keep everything as simple as possible and accidental complexity down, so that Scala newcomers will have no problem to participate.

TODO before the Workshop:

• You need to have a working setup of Scala development tools (Git, IDE of your choice, SBT 13.0.x)

• Clone the GitHub repository: https://github.com/papauschek/akka-workshop-cluster

• Make sure you can compile it and use it in your IDE.

• Check out the Cheat Sheet during the workshop: http://blog.papauschek.com/2014/02/akka/

Sponsors:
This workshop is sponsored by xTradesoft (http://www.xtradesoft.com/)!

Drinks are free, we're also planning to bring in some food after the event.