adam bien's blog

1. The technical setup, visual experience improved a lot.
2. GlassFish Community Event was already good last year, this year it was even more interesting: several GlassFish users reported their experience with GlassFish in production. We had long conversations after that. The party after that was excellent as always - with traditional guest: James Gosling.
3. The keynotes were informative, informal and funny. Even the partner keynotes were interesting (Juniper and IBM were interesting, and the Intel part was scheduled right: I installed and tested NetBeans 7.1 beta))
4. The keynote speakers did a great job, were entertaining and engaged. A huge difference to last year.
5. The technical content was good again. Because of that and really good hallway converstations I managed to pick the lunchbox only once. A very good sign. I spent from 8.00 AM to 22.00 PM at the conference attending sessions and discussing questions with attendees. Sleeping was optional...
6. I attended several sessions delivered by Oracle speakers - they were great as well - without any product pitches. Btw. one of my added values of JavaOne are Oracle (=prior Sun, BEA, JRockit, and Oracle) engineers talking about what they are doing: Java
7. The pavilion was packed with attendees and exhibitors. There was a lot more stuff, than last year

JavaOne 2011 greatly exceeded my expectations and surprised me at the same time. Twitter joins openJDK, Java FX 2 is skinnable with CSS 3, will be entirely opensource and shipped with JDK 1.7, JDK 1.7 preview on Mac is available, the new JavaScript engine looks promising and JDK 1.8 is around the corner. Jigsaw is looking really good and will play well with Java FX and Java EE 8.

1. I think Oracle will not give up Moscone peacefully (they need at least one huge room for the yacht :-)). BUT: every attendee I talked with really liked this year JavaOne. I think JavaOne will also grow next year. …but there will be not enough room in the hotels (“the zone”). So: spread the word, take your family to JavaOne and we will get Moscone back (this is the evil plan)
2. Sting and Tom Petty are nice, but Java is appealing as well. I would offer as alternative to this (great) party some BOFs. I would prefer to attend these. (I would probably revise this statement in case next year Metallica, U2, Pink Floyd, Kraftwerk, (…) will give a gig…)
3. * Although it is supposed to “Never Rain in California” I would seriously rethink the architecture of the Mason Street tent for next year :-)

Thanks for the JavaOne and see you next year!